Come Attrition, Come Hell
by Blue Chance
Summary: Set an hour or so after the conversation in Mycroft's study in ASiB, I don't think Irene would have fled London immediately, do you?: Sherlock hadn't expected to see her, not now, not here, not after toppling her whole world… yet here she was, and he'd always remember tonight as the night something changed. Irene/Sherlock
1. For The Moment

****Disclaimer:** **I don't own any of this… Well, maybe some of it, but certainly not the rights to the characters or the plot of the episode A Scandal in Belgravia. I have been to the real 221B Baker Street, though. Which has nothing to do with anything, other than it being awesome. Anyway, all rights to Stephen Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and the BBC! I doubt they'll ever get around to reading this, but if they ever did it might be kind of an honor to be sued by them. Having said that, please don't sue me.

**Timeframe:** Set sometime between the conversation in Mycroft's study at the end of A Scandal in Belgravia, and the rescue in Karachi.

**Rating:** Eventually M, though the first chapter is not.

**Author's Note:** In the author's note to my last Sherlock fic, I wrote:

_"This story kept me properly obsessed for about 2 weeks, because I found that out of every bit of fan fiction I've ever written, and all the character's heads I've gotten in to, Sherlock was the absolute hardest for me to write. It was a challenge, and it was awesome. I'm already working on my next Sherlock story, and I really hope this piece sets the stage, even though I very much hope to evolve my characterizations."_

I definitely find while writing this new story, that I've _finally_ found a voice, which is to say I've finally found a way to write a version of Sherlock that resonates as authentic to me, something that had alluded me in my first foray. As I say, it's a _version_, seeing as how I don't fancy myself quite clever enough to ever truly get inside that head, but I do think I've succeeded in what I set out to do to begin with. As ever, I am having an inappropriate amount of fun writing this, and the obsession continues to burn on.

As for the rating, I've never been a huge fan of overt sexuality in stories where there really was no place for it. I dabbled in it in my earlier fic writing, because that was what appeared to be popular. Since then, I've definitely adopted an attitude of, if it doesn't add anything to the story, it shouldn't be there. As far as a relationship between Sherlock and Irene goes, I think the matter of sexuality is an incredibly fascinating one, and there's every reason to explore it. I do not, however, write porn… So if that's what you've come here for, I really hope that you'll give this story a chance anyway.

If you were patient enough to read that whole thing, please understand that I love you and think you're a saint. I hope you enjoy this story!

* * *

><p><strong>Come Attrition, Come Hell<strong>

**Part 1**

**Chapter 1: For The Moment**

**...**

It had just started to rain as Sherlock unceremoniously exited his brother's posh home, leaving behind the older Holmes and Irene Adler to what was probably a very tedious conversation, though one his brother likely relished at that. He'd been just a hair's breadth away from crushing defeat. They both had been.

It was an eleventh hour victory, certainly, but a victory nonetheless.

Something of a victory anyway.

Sherlock pulled his collar up against the cold and the damp, and walked, what may have appeared to an observer as, absently down the street. It briefly occurred to him to hail a cab, but the rain didn't bother him, and anyway... He wasn't in a hurry to get home.

The light drops of water fell and clung to the detective's curly hair, and he vaguely wondered what it would be like living in a climate where this was not the norm, where the skies were more often blue than gray. Somewhere in America, perhaps? Somewhere in California where, like so many of its other residents, the sun was famous. He thought he should detest it, actually. This weather, this climate, his coat, and his scarf, this solitude... It was London, and it was as much a part of him as was the color of his eyes.

Dismissing these thoughts, as they were becoming dangerously close to seeming like sentiment, something he had chided The Woman for not 15 minutes before, he took his leather gloves from his pocket, and wished to God they were a pack of cigarettes instead. God, clearly bothered by Sherlock's unequivocal disbelief in him, however, did not comply... And the gloves remained gloves as the dark haired man slipped them over his hands.

He'd won. He had clearly won... But it was an unsatisfying win. Something, he felt, that couldn't be much unlike winning a game by cheating at it. He hadn't cheated, of course, but he hadn't quite played fair, either.

He'd understood that Irene's show of interest in him, for some time, had been a smokescreen to mask her _actual_ interest in him. It had been clear upon their first meeting that she'd known of him for quite a while longer than he had known of her, and that she'd already become something of a fan of his intellect. From the outset she'd masked her true investment with layered flirtation, hiding in plain sight, as it were... And though he couldn't precisely pinpoint when exactly he'd understood her for what she was, he _had_ been convinced that she had, for lack of a better vocabulary on the subject, fancied him.

It wasn't until just tonight in his sitting room, however, that he had realized she was in love with him.

He'd had no particular reason for taking her pulse other than that she had presented him with the perfect opportunity. He felt the rapid beat of her heart through her wrist as soon as she placed her hand over his, and moving his fingers over her pulse point under the guise of a returning caress seemed almost the logical thing to do in that particular situation - the collecting of all available data to paint a more complete portrait. The beat quickened as he turned her wrist in his hand, and he could read everything else he needed to know in her face. He'd seen the signs so many times in others, particularly in Molly Hooper where the sentiment had been directed toward himself.

Having taken in her physiological symptoms and comparing it against what he had already known about her and experienced of her, he was satisfied in his conclusion that she had indeed fallen in love with him at some point. How he would ever find a useful application for this information, he was uncertain. In fact, it had made little difference to him whether she loved him or not, since she seemed quite keen on concealing it from him and it would likely never come in to play at all. As for his own feelings, he was left a bit amused, but on the whole at a loss as to why she'd mislaid her sentiment so absolutely. He hadn't, however, planned on using her feelings toward him against her.

She had continued her act of disinterest as she spoke to Mycroft about demands and protection, and Sherlock was inclined to let her. After all, what would have been the point in pulling the rug out from under that particular charade? She loved him, but so what? It didn't matter. It wasn't going halt her in her course, and since that would be the only outcome Sherlock was interested in from any action he chose to take, her love was, again, useless to him.

And then, of course, it wasn't.

Sherlock unconsciously clenched his hands in to fists in his pockets and shivered only slightly over the increasingly present cold. He felt... something. Anger? It was an emotion not immediately identifiable, whatever it was, and that _alone_ was quite frustrating. Even putting aside, for a moment, the utter, _utter_, humiliation he had just been dealt.

He hadn't meant to use her feelings against her, no, but when the last piece of her ridiculous puzzle clicked in to place with almost painful clarity, he was unmerciful.

There was no denying now that she had succeeded in fooling him, at least insofar as he hadn't completely sensed an ulterior motive. The pretense of infatuation, while he had already identified it as a smokescreen, was also meant as a distraction. One that had worked. He could almost applaud the effort, really. It was no small task fooling him at all, and she had done it so thoroughly. It was impressive, and unforgivable.

So when the opportunity arose to tear her mask apart, his anger and cruelty were hot and swift. He was callous and precise, and even as something not unlike hatred though completely different from it as well burned in his chest, he pressed on. He wanted to be sure she understood why even the people he helped referred to him as a freak; why even the people of the city that he so often protected thought of him as a psychopath. Why _love_ was nothing but a trap in the end even on the best of terms, but on his terms was nothing short of an atrocity.

_Love._

Sherlock's mind recoiled at the word even as he audibly scoffed. What _had_ she been thinking of, falling in love with him? He wanted to hate her for it, and in truth he felt a deep abhorrence toward her and her sentiment toward him... but he was left wondering at why he had wanted to use it to _hurt_ her. Why was this blight among all the many he had suffered in a lifetime of being other than what people wanted him to be so completely and horribly loathsome to him?

Why did he _care_?

On the surface, the answer was simple, really. She had embarrassed him, and it was rather a bit unacceptable... But that wasn't the whole answer. There was something else, something that defied calculation and classification.

Suddenly, and unbidden, his thoughts turned to the night he had found The Woman's phone on his mantel. He had been certain that she was dead, and it...

He shook his head twice, violently, before he could finish his train of thought, and then held his hand out for a taxi.

* * *

><p>After paying his cabbie, Sherlock alighted from the black cab and took a deep breath as he came to stand in front of 221B. It was, as always, a welcomed sight, and even he couldn't deny that a sense of being home was comforting.<p>

He surveyed the door with a short glance as he always did before entering. Judging by the angle at which the doorknocker sat, the door had been opened and closed only once since his own departure, accounting for the Woman leaving a short while after him, which meant that John was still out. Sherlock was relieved, but at the same time disappointed. It wouldn't have been terrible to see a, what would someone else say?

_A friendly face_, his mind begrudgingly offered.

Pushing the front door open, he stepped in and wiped his feet on the mat in the foyer unconsciously. He looked through the foggy glass of the interior door for a moment, his gaze empty and distracted, before pushing through to head up the 17 steps to his flat.

But he stopped at the foot of the stairs. Immediately a wave of adrenaline crashed against him so suddenly and intensely that he had to close his eyes against it.

She was here.

Mycroft; an even more unforgiving and unrelenting foe than himself. He had let her go, with all the knowledge of what exactly that meant for her. She had committed treason, to be sure, and should have been on her way to prison, or to her own public beheading (though, unfortunately, Britain was no longer in the practice of publicly beheading its traitors), but instead Mycroft had released her back in to the wild to be cannibalized by what he may have classed as "her own sort." It was cruel, in a way, but more calculated than that. It was a move to show that she could not hope to find protection here, certainly not in England, but most likely not in the whole of the UK. Not even in the form of a prison cell. Perhaps had a different government official been in a position to make that decision, or perhaps if Mycroft had not been Mycroft _Holmes,_ it would have been different. But it wasn't different.

Sherlock's eyes opened and his jaw set as his gaze traveled slowly up the steps. For someone who prided himself on knowing a person's next move before they even knew it themself, he found that it was rather startling to be presented with the fact that he hadn't _expected _The Woman to come here. He hadn't expected to be confronted with seeing her again so soon after _toppling her whole world_. In hindsight, it was obvious, really, that she should turn up here if his brother (as he _had_ anticipated) let her go. Everything that he knew of her behavior thus far through their association, the patterns she adhered to, the fact that she _loved_ him, made her appearance here tonight a glaring inevitability, but one that he had _still _missed.

He was clearly off his game, which was not a little disconcerting, because his game was more than just a set of exceptional observational skills; it was _who he was_. Being startled, being confused, being emotional, being so deeply moved to feeling so many times in one night and in instances so close in proximity to one another made him feel foreign in his own body. And through it all the sense of betrayal was coming through louder and clearer than anything he had yet felt... but it wasn't betrayal by Irene Adler. Betrayal implied an already established trust, and a belief that something was intrinsically one way and_ not_ another... And though he had believed Irene's story in part, he had always assumed that he was not seeing quite to the core of who she was or what she wanted. There had been no trust lost there.

Sherlock Holmes felt he had betrayed himself.

With a deep breath, he began the climb up the steps, his hand running along the wall to his left. He didn't know what real reason she could have for coming here, couldn't even _conceive_ of a reason for it, seeing as how their business with each other was permanently settled, but there was no mistaking the scent of her perfume wafting down to meet him as he ascended. It was ingrained in his memory as his coat had carried the fragrance for some days after she had returned it to him following their first meeting. It was something very near to horrible to him now, and he both hated it and was entranced by it in equal measure, though he was grateful, at least, that it had given him a "heads-up" as to her presence. He was preparing himself with each step he took, consciously focusing his his breathing until it was even and steady, collecting his thoughts and his wits.

By the time Sherlock made it to the landing, he had regained a substantial amount of his normal calm collectedness. He pulled the gloves from his hands and returned them to his coat pocket as he tread slowly to his room. The door had been left slightly ajar, and the soft glow of his bedside lamp was visible. If The Woman knew he was here, she made no announcement of it.

He didn't know why he should feel any apprehension at all in this moment. This was, after all, his home, _his domain._ If London was his kingdom, then 221B was inextricably his castle, and his mind his palace... but he nonetheless felt a measure of uncertainty as he made it to his door. Pushing it open the rest of the way, he stepped in.

Something inside of him gave pause for a microsecond; not long enough to be of detriment, but just long enough to throw a warning.

There she was, just as he knew she would be, sitting at the end of his bed, staring at the wall in front of her. Her hair was down again, though she still wore the black dress she had been in earlier. She didn't turn to look at him. She didn't move at all.

"Back to your _not_ evil hair again, I see." Sherlock said carelessly as he closed his door slightly to gain access to the hook behind it. He unraveled his scarf first, and then shrugged off his coat, hanging both items across the door as he spoke. "Is there a switch at the back of your neck for that?"

"He's going to kill me now." The Woman spoke softly, though it didn't seem as though she was addressing Sherlock at all. For his part, he nearly froze at the words, but was able to turn to look at her instead.

"What are you doing here?" He asked.

She turned to him at that, and Sherlock was able to clearly observe the streaks in her makeup, and the red tinge to her eyes and nose. She had been crying, sobbing, in fact, and rather convulsively. The soft and impermanent lines that had already begun to fade around her mouth and eyes, however, made it clear that she had been calm for at least an hour. Had she been here that long? He told himself that it was immaterial, that it was_ all_ immaterial, though he didn't much care for the tightening in his chest, and was thankful that he didn't feel necessarily inclined to analyze the reason for it.

"This is the safest place for me at the moment." Was her simple response.

_At the moment_. Well, there was an implication there, obviously.

"Lovely." Sherlock answered flatly as he undid his jacket button and crossed the room to his dresser over which he emptied the meager contents of his pocket - a business card and his mobile - quietly turning over a small framed photo of he and his brother as children, that always sat atop the wooden chest of drawers, as he did so. He wasn't sure why it bothered him that The Woman might see it, and furthermore he knew it was likely that she already had, but he turned it over anyway. "And where might that be in the _next_ moment? Somewhere else, I can only hope." He annunciated the "p" in "hope" more than was absolutely necessary.

"Of course." The Woman said almost conversationally. "He'll know to look for me here."

Sherlock faced her, though she continued to stare at his wall.

"In my bedroom?" He asked with an even, almost bored tone.

"In London." She responded, finally looking at him.

Sherlock stared blankly for a moment.

"Yes. I can't imagine that you've made many friends in London while... _misbehaving_."

She visibly flinched.

"Only you."

Admittedly, like her appearance here, he wasn't expecting that.

Sherlock was silent as he examined her face and contemplated her words and their meaning. Honestly, there was a bit to wade through here. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, who was this "he" to which she was referring? The detective had 3 theories, 2 of which made substantially less sense than the last, and so he was left relatively assured the last was correct.

Her association with James Moriarty had come as something of a surprise to him, though now the different pieces, too scattered for him to have seen the way they fit together before, were now falling in to place. It had been her call about the undecipherable email that had saved his and John's lives at the pool, though she most likely hadn't been aware of it at the time. That didn't matter, though. What mattered was that Moriarty _was_ aware of the secrets and information tucked away in her camera phone, some of them presumably pertaining to several of his... projects. Nothing definitive, of course; the man Sherlock had met at the pool that night had not been a negligent one, so nothing on the phone would lead directly to him. It would, however, be a very unwelcomed irritant.

It was only a matter of time before he knew that Mycroft had gained access to Irene's files, and a matter of probability that he would have her killed if only because she was a loose end and useless to him now.

"You can't hide here." He said finally, completely passing over her comment, unwilling to rise to it. "Given your profile and the nature of the information you've been holding, it's unlikely your whereabouts will remain unknown for long, if at all."

The Woman stood, though made no move to leave, and she seemed somehow completely changed from the confident dominatrix that had almost brought the Holmes brothers to their knees. Sherlock found himself vaguely trying to reconcile this version of her with the version he'd been presented with on all other occasions, and it became apparent to him that this was the real Irene Adler. The Woman when all the pretense had been stripped away. He wanted to think her ordinary and dull like everyone else at the revelation, but the truth was this didn't alter his opinion of her at all.

"Do you hate me so much?" She asked, her face setting itself into lines of obvious distress, though Sherlock assumed it wasn't exactly in connection to what she had just said.

"Hate you?" He asked, his mouth quirking in to a very small and dangerous grin as he took a step toward her. "I don't feel anything for you."

_Still trying to hurt her?_ Something inside of him prodded through the new and strange ache behind his ribcage. _Why?_

"Moriarty will know-"

Sherlock dismissed her words with an impatient wave of his hand, wordlessly telling her she needn't explain the situation to him - though he did feel a vague sense of satisfaction at having accurately assessed who "he" was.

Irene tightened her jaw, her eyes glossing over anew.

"He _will _kill me... I gave myself 6 months." She continued. Sherlock raised his chin, observing her from beneath lowered eyelids. "I was being very generous."

The low boil of frustration building up inside of Sherlock was now a familiar one. It was the dissatisfaction at having a particularly difficult puzzle dangled in front of him, only to be confronted with the fact that he didn't possess the necessary tools to solve it. He knew next to nothing about Jim Moriarty, and this was quite the crude reminder of that. He didn't like being in the dark. He didn't like being made to feel as though he didn't _understand_.

"And you've come to me, for what?" Sherlock ground out neatly. "_Protection_?"

"No, Mr. Holmes. My protection was ripped away from me tonight, and there is no help for me now." She sounded angry, and justifiably frightened. The return to the formal address was interesting as well, though he wasn't exactly sure why he thought so. "My life depended on the information on that phone, and it was worth everything, _everything_ to me. It was worth your pride and my feelings... What good is my heart if I'm dead?"

_Ah_, Sherlock thought as something became clear to him, though not necessarily in response to her question. _You _hurt_ me._

It was a deeply mortifying realization, but one that he could not deny. She had brought up her impending death in the context of her feelings toward him, and he could not refrain from remembering his own feelings for her in the context of her earlier perceived death. It was what he was thinking just before he hailed the cab home.

He had been certain that she was dead, and it had _hurt_ him.

Extrapolating from there, it was impossible to ignore the plain fact that she had hurt him again earlier tonight, and that's why he had wanted to hurt her... Which was, in itself, an unconscious admission of his own regard.

Something about this line of thought was, he felt, inherently dangerous to him, and since it was neither relevant nor useful, he managed to push it away and keep the strain from showing on his face. The only notable proof that he was fighting an internal conflict at all was that his breathing had become markedly more shallow, and his face had gone a tad paler.

"The only help I can offer, and the only help you can expect," he started, staring down at her, meaning his words incontrovertibly. "-Is advice to run. Run now, and far, and keep running, because you _were_ right."

She watched him silently, seemingly appraising every movement of his face and every nuance of his words.

"6 months was incredibly generous." He finished, his mouth pressing together in something that was half grimace, half sneer.

He crossed behind her toward the door, though he wasn't exactly sure what he meant to do once he got there. Was he just going to pop out in to the study, pour himself a nice cuppa', and wait until she politely let herself out? All he knew was that he wanted her gone, even if gone meant that she was headed off to die, because then he would finally be _rid_ of her-

Sherlock halted abruptly with his hand outstretched toward the door at that thought... because even in his state of acute agitation, he could recognize palpable discomfort at the idea that she should die, and what's more, that she should die because of him.

He screwed his eyes shut for a moment before blinking them rapidly, and then slowly, moving them from side to side as though examining the carpet beneath him.

"It wouldn't have mattered to you in a month's time." The Woman's voice, strained, came from behind him. He furrowed his forehead slightly, dropping his hand back to his side, and turning to look at her in bemusement. She swallowed, and one thick tear dropped from each of her eyes in unison. Sherlock felt, more than observed, that a change was taking place, and one that he didn't think would be altogether a good one. "I would have gotten what I wanted, my _protection_. Everything I worked for, as you aptly put it. I would have disappeared." She shook her head.

"And what would it have cost you?" Her eyes narrowed slightly as she continued and looked him up and down with a judging and accusatory glare without moving her head. "Your older brother's temporary scorn. Some embarrassment. A loss. One loss against how many wins?" Tears, again. Sherlock swallowed, and his mouth felt uncomfortably dry. "You guessed what I felt, and then you threw me to the wolves, and for what?"

He opened his mouth to speak, but found, for once, that he had nothing to say.

"You were trying to save face in front of the cleverer Holmes in that room, and I was fighting for my life. You weighed one against the other and chose your pride over my life, because the only belief you have is in yourself, and you-"

These were vicious, unfiltered words, not necessarily in content, but certainly in subtext, even if they were being spoken in a relatively calm and unbroken cadence. There was venom there that hadn't been present minutes earlier... And the effect it had on him was significant, both because of the resentment she was inspiring within him, and because he was very suddenly feeling something precariously similar to guilt for perhaps only the second or third time in his life.

"Me?"

The Woman jumped slightly. He had meant only to make a placid interjection, but somehow it had come out as a coarse shout. He could have taken a moment to compose himself, but... didn't. He stalked toward Irene, closing the gap between the two of them.

"I didn't ask for you. I didn't ask for any of this." He intoned with his own venom, his voice darker and lower than it had been even in Mycroft's study. "You're a grown woman, Irene, or need I remind you that it was of your own volition that you chose to consult a psychopath about matters of potential national importance?" He grabbed her around the wrist, and she gasped up at him in surprise. "Did you think this was all going to end in a tea party at the National Gallery?" His eyes became two dark slits contrasted against the pallor of his face, his mouth turning in a twisted smile. "No, you knew what he was, and what he was capable of. _You_ weighed your life against the whole of the country, and found the country wanting."

He burned his gaze in to hers for only a moment longer before releasing his grasp on her. She closed her eyes against the new onslaught of tears that fell, and sat heavily back down on the bed. Sherlock only stared forward.

"You came here wanting my aid or my mercy." He went on in a decidedly cooler, but no less hateful, tone. "I am neither willing to offer, nor am I capable of offering, either."

He looked down at her slumped figure, her hair falling in a mess around her face, obscuring her expression from view. He didn't need to see it to know that it was obvious to her now that she was defeated, and completely alone.

If he had been any other man, this was the moment he would have relented to her - given her anything and everything she asked for. Seeing her so thoroughly vulnerable and exposed was nothing short of gut wrenching - a term he had never had cause to apply to any situation, and one that he was intensely startled, if not horrified to have applied now... yet there it was. If he were any other man, she would have been in his arms, and he would be promising his life away to her just for the hope of taking her grief away... But he wasn't any other man, and so he merely swallowed the lump in his throat and said:

"Know... when you are beaten."

She looked up at him suddenly, her eyes as wide and wild as a frightened child's, her cheeks flushed in a deep crimson. Sherlock's breath caught in his chest.

"Do you?" She asked cryptically.

"What?" He asked trying to sound put out, though the look of confusion on his face probably betrayed him.

"Jim Moriarty is just as clever as you, and what do you think a man with your calculating intelligence would do if he were criminally mad?" Sherlock said nothing, but continued to look on as Irene straightened her shoulders. "He wants to burn the world down, Sherlock, and for no other reason than that he _can_. I'll be out of the way soon enough, but then I never really mattered. I shudder to think what it would be like to _matter_ to him."

The insinuation was clear, that he - that Sherlock - mattered... And what was clearer was that her appraisal of the situation was nothing but correct, right along with each dubious meaning the word "mattered" implied. He had heard Moriarty tell the very woman who sat before him that he would find her and skin her if she had been lying to him over the phone, and he had an overall feeling that the man wasn't being figurative.

"I think I've well proven that I can handle myself." Sherlock responded quietly, though he was shaken, and probably visibly at that.

Irene smirked, though it held no warmth.

"You're going to fall." She said blithely. "And I only hope that I live at least long enough to see it."

That... stung, and since it was likely meant to, he was loath to accept that it did.

Sherlock bit down.

"And if you had chosen a different passcode, perhaps you might have... but now we'll never know."

He regretted the words almost immediately, which was another of his feelings rarely visited upon. For her part, oddly, The Woman looked abruptly more detached than she had even when he'd first entered the room.

"No, we won't, will we?" She murmured, though it did not even appear to be directed at Sherlock at all.

An excruciatingly long moment passed before Sherlock ran his hand impatiently through his hair and began to pace the room. This was just... unacceptable. The whole messy affair. He had never pictured himself the star of his own bloody soap opera, yet here was a beautiful and damaged woman sitting forlorn on his bed, and the compulsion to hold her until that look was well gone out of her eyes was becoming more and more urgent as each second went by.

How could he let her leave? _How_? But how could he let her stay?

Neither was possible. Neither was conceivable.

Sherlock hadn't noticed Irene's intent eyes fixed upon him as he paced until she reached out at his hand, halting him mid step. He looked down in to her face, her dark blue stare shining bright with tears and pain, and he was undone.

There were very few moments in Sherlock's life that he would categorize as "defining." The first time he had come to a conclusion before Mycroft had, and therefor the first time he realized he could perhaps be just as clever as his older brother, was one. The moment he realized he cared for John Watson was another...

And then there was this. A moment that, for reasons completely alluding him, he knew he would look back on with the certainty that this was when something had changed for him - completely and absolutely.

"Sherlock-"

His name hung in the air as he sunk to his knees in front of Irene, his hands desperately cradling her on either side of her head, and pressed his lips to hers in a frenzied kiss that, he understood now, was probably always going to happen.

The ground was dropping out from underneath him now, he knew, but as always when The Woman was involved, he was quite at a loss as to how to stop it.

**...**


	2. Contrition

**Author's Note: **Wow, thank you so much to everyone's who's read and encouraged me to keep writing this story. I have to admit that I'm a bit nervous about posting this new chapter. I really hope that I don't let anyone down!

This next part has a lot of John Watson in it, and a whole lot of plot set up. It was necessary, and I wanted to get it out of the way early on (though, I admit, I had a terribly large amount of fun writing it). Like I mentioned in my farewell note on my last chapter, I'm jumping slightly around the timeline of Irene and Sherlock's relationship, which you'll see a bit of here, but it'll be more extreme in chapters to come. As for the story arc, I'd like to make it clear that any plot development is really just a device to explore my version of the Irene/Sherlock dynamic, so if you're a fan of that relationship, you're in the right place!

Lastly, I would like to write this so that it's plausible all the events that take place in this story could have happened between the time we last see Irene in Mycroft's study, and the time Sherlock rescues her in Kirachi. We'll see how well I can pull that off

Again, thank you to everyone who's read this story so far. I hope you enjoy the new installment!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 2: Contrition<strong>

**...**

**One Month Later**

"No, no. You're not _listening_."

He was irritated. Often times explaining things to people who did not understand them was something of a balm. Something that soothed his need for completion and solution. Explaining things, and doing it in a way that another person would comprehend, was something of a puzzle in itself. How to break something down to its slowest moving parts so that others could see the mechanisms, the subtleties, and the nuances... It was something close to a hobby.

But this? This was like talking to a child.

"Sherlock..." John Watson intoned almost warningly, but still with a forced smile on his face as he kept his eyes on their client. The curly haired man continued on with an almost manic rush of tone and gesture, ignoring his side-kick completely.

"If she merely ran away, there would be a paper trail. People _always_ leave trails, especially someone who fancies herself clever, but isn't. The margin for error is always significant."

"Sherlock..." Watson said again.

Sherlock shot his friend a peevish glance. What? What did he want? Couldn't he see? Why couldn't they _see_?

"Oh, come on. It's obvious." Sherlock sneered, pausing mid pace as he gestured at the girl sitting on the wooden chair in front of them, then addressed his tirade at her. "You don't like your father; you assume your mother ran away to escape him, probably they've been fighting. You're wearing a shirt with Einstein screen printed on the front, and I may be a bit out of the loop here, but I'm reasonably certain that Einstein isn't exactly a pop culture icon. It's an interest you've picked up from your mother, the favorite of your two parents, probably worn today as an unconscious homage. She likes Einstein, but isn't a scientist herself. She's interested in physics but writes romance novels-"

"How could you possibly-"

"The book." Sherlock interrupted Watson impatiently, pointing at the book that poked out from the girl's bag on the floor next to her feet, and then began typing in to his phone which was already in his hand as he had been texting Detective Inspector Lestrade for the better part of this consultation. "Clarke, same surname. Written by her mother. So, she's a writer, and holds a passing interest in the sciences - clearly she thinks she's clever, people interested in science always do, but clearly she isn't; writers never really are. If she'd run away, she would have left behind clues. An empty bank account. Credit card charges. A hired car. But there's nothing."

John held his hand out in a "calm down now" gesture.

"I'm sorry, how do you know there's nothing?" He asked.

Sherlock quirked his mouth in to a knowing smile, and laughed shortly.

"Please." He said. "What do you think I was doing on my phone this whole time, reading up on what the King's had for breakfast? Lestrade has access to these sorts of records, and I have access to Lestrade."

John smiled almost blankly, a strain showing through that he likely was trying to hide.

"We don't have- Listen, is that... even legal?" He asked incredulously.

Legal. Well, that was funny.

"Not in the strictest sense, no, but you'd be surprised how often legality impedes justice."

"Then where is my mum?" The young client interjected suddenly, tears brimming her eyes.

Sherlock looked up from his phone and felt just the smallest bit of surprise at the fact that she was even still there, as he no longer needed to hear anything more from her. Life would be a lot more convenient if people knew when their usefulness had run its course.

"Dead, of course." He looked back down for a moment, before suddenly looking up again. "And I'll take the case." He finished, almost as an afterthought.

John slowly covered his eyes with his hand as the two elder people who sat on the sofa behind their 11-year-old granddaughter stood angrily.

"How dare you say such a thing to a little girl?" The old woman demanded.

"Dead?" The girl asked, her voice pitched high. "She can't be dead!"

"Why can't she?" Sherlock asked, narrowing his eyes, wondering if maybe she had more to offer than what she had already given. "Do be specific."

The girl swallowed.

"Because-" Her voice caught, and tears began rolling down her eyes. "Because she's my _mum_."

Sherlock's expression softened as he realized that he'd missed something again - that he'd completely and utterly missed something. He couldn't just speak that bluntly to a child, could he? There were societal rules about that sort of thing; there always were. He didn't necessarily understand it, given that he didn't think there was anything particular to protect in a child, seeing as how an ignorant small human would eventually grow to nothing more than an ignorant large one... but the expression that now spread over Emma Clarke's face in conjunction with the words she had just spoken alerted him quite conclusively to that fact that he had done something cruel. That hadn't been his intention, of course, but then it never was. He looked over at his friend contritely, or rather as contritely as the nature of who he was would allow him to be. John merely pursed his lips with a small shake of his head, but didn't return Sherlock's glance.

"Come along." The old woman said, taking hold of her granddaughter's arm and gently pulling her up from the chair as her husband opened the door for the two of them.

"Please, Mr. Holmes." The girl implored one last time before being pushed out of the room, though Sherlock could hear the rest of her desperate plea from the steps. "You said you took the case. Please find her..."

Emma's grandfather remained in the doorway, his face hard and his eyes dark.

"With a reputation like yours, I can hardly pretend to be surprised." He said in a low, shaking voice. "But psychopath isn't the right word, Mr. Holmes. It's far too kind for what you are." He gestured toward John and nodded curtly before leaving the room after his wife and granddaughter. John took a deep breath and then stood. Sherlock's eyes remained averted.

"I can see how I could have handled that-"

"She's _just_ a little girl, Sherlock!" his friend ground out angrily. Now Sherlock did meet John's eyes, finding it not humorous, but interesting that John thought it necessary to chide him even though he had already begun to admit that he had understood that he had been out of line - or at least that he understood that everyone else in the room thought he had been out of line. "You couldn't have-" He shook his head, cutting himself off. "Even now. How am I still capable of being shocked by _you_?" He finished, looking at over Sherlock with an almost impressed disdain.

Sherlock silently held John's gaze for moment before holding out his phone so that his friend could see the screen.

"Thomas Clarke." He said flatly, deciding that he didn't have time for contrition. The little girl was gone, the grandparent's were already angry, and it all amounted to nothing in the end. If other people wanted to go around constantly regretting their behavior and lamenting the fact that they couldn't make amends - or even feeling that they deserved their friends' unsolicited judgment, then that was their cross to bear. He couldn't, nor did he want to, make himself feel as sorry as John seemed to think he should, and that would always be one of the many fundamental differences between the two of them. John cared, and that made life just a little bit harder on him every single day. Sherlock, on the other hand, had only a small collection of people that he cared about, and he kept them all up on a very high shelf in his Mind Palace where they were safe but often left dusty. Ultimately, he knew he would always be this way, and it just wasn't worth the tension. He put his phone back in to his pocket.

John creased his forehead, an incredulous grin on his face.

"What?" He asked, obviously not quite ready to let the incident pass without further comment. Sherlock pointed at the chair where the girl had been seated moments before.

"Emma Clarke's father. The CEO of Magpie Publishing, it was how his appallingly untalented wife managed to get a book deal... Her murder was-"

"Murder?" John interrupted, raising his voice again. "You haven't got any proof of murder, have you? And now you've scared an eleven-year-old child to-"

"3 other murders within a month. I didn't think they were connected until just now." Sherlock said, unbuttoning his jacket button and sitting in front of John's laptop on the table, tapping quickly on the keys. "Thomas is one of my rats, one of the people I keep an eye on. Their movements keep me informed... I recognized the name as soon as Emma spoke it."

John nodded ironically, because he obviously did not agree with where Sherlock was going with this.

"Right," He said, licking his bottom lip. "So you think he murdered his wife."

Sherlock smiled darkly and looked up at John, then turned the laptop to face him. He'd pulled up a breaking news article, and the headline read:

**Woman Found Dead at Charing Cross**

"A name hasn't been released yet," Sherlock started. Standing, he went to the window and pulled back the drapes to look out on to the street. As he expected, the old woman was on her mobile, looking rather shocked over something. His mouth quirked to one side at the sight, but it wasn't a smile. "But the family is likely being notified as we speak." He looked back at John, who didn't appear particularly impressed, though concern did show through - probably for the aforementioned family of whomever it was who was just found dead.

John just couldn't stop himself caring... his cross to bear.

"For God's sake," Sherlock said exasperatedly as he sat back down to the computer and turned it back to face himself. "It's a message."

"A message? To who?"

"4 murders inside of a month, all people connected to but not involved with big business crime. Thomas Clarke has long been suspected of skimming off the top of his own company... not to mention disseminating awful literature amongst a not wholly undeserving public." He said the last part partially under his breath, and then looked up at the doctor. "It's not a message to him. It's a message to all of them."

"What?" John asked.

"The criminals of this city having been acting strange. Closing accounts here, taking unplanned trips there. Something happened to scare them, and now this. Someone's telling them something, but what, and why? What's going to _happen_?"

He knew there was something bigger, too big to see unless held under the right light... But there was something else, too, that was tugging at him. He had information somewhere in his mind that pertained to this case, he could feel it, but he couldn't quite place it.

"But why kill the wife? Why kill the people connected, but not the people responsible?" John asked, still looking unconvinced, which irked Sherlock because he didn't feel that he had ever given the man precedent to doubt him. He had never given _anyone_ precedent to doubt him, and yet they still tried to poke holes in his methods or conclusions.

Even The Woman had done it, once.

Sherlock allowed himself to think of her just for a moment. The case could wait just for the brief second that his mind decided to bring her down from her dusty shelf. He could smell her and feel her, and the memories ached in a way that he was now familiar with, and he - suddenly and briefly - missed her. When he began to wonder if she ever felt the same about him, he knew he'd had her down for too long.

"Sentiment." Sherlock responded absently.

"Sentiment?"

The detective looked at his friend and then sighed impatiently, though he was thankful for the distraction.

"Yes, sentiment. Why did you offer to hold Moriarty and let me run that night by the pool? Self-sacrifice is easy, but sacrificing someone you care for is hard. It's the same concept here. The murderer is using sentiment against his victims. He doesn't want to get rid of the people involved, he wants to hurt them, likely to keep them in check." He paused, before continuing in a quieter tone. "Dying is easier than watching someone you love die because of you."

Then it clicked.

Sherlock's eyes slid shut as he ran through the available data. Criminals were having loved ones killed off, and it was a message. Thomas Clarke's wife probably hadn't been innocent in whatever schemes her husband had been entrenched in, but she wasn't the important one of the two. Searching back through the information he had on the other murders, he felt this was obviously or at least likely to be the case with all of them. The murderer was paring down and reasserting some kind of dominance. Cutting away loose ends, but not burning bridges, and in the cruelest way possible.

Of course. Sherlock had been waiting for this.

"Obvious." He whispered angrily, then opened his eyes. "The Woman."

"The Wo- what, you mean Irene Adler?" John asked with a bemused laugh. "You think Irene Adler is the murderer?"

"No." Sherlock responded with a shake of his head and roll of his eyes, though hearing the name wasn't all together pleasant for him. "The information she had on that phone - Mycroft and the British government have that information now, and someone knows it."

Realization poured over John's face.

"Someone." He repeated, though it was clear he knew exactly whom Sherlock was alluding to.

Because, of course, it was Jim Moriarty... And if Jim Moriarty was cutting loose ends, The Woman was in danger.

Suddenly, Sherlock - his heart in his throat - began frantically looking around the flat.

"Sherlock, what are you-"

"Have we gotten a letter, or a- a postcard recently?" He continued to pace the room, checking under stacks of newspaper, and piles of seemingly useless rubbish. He had no idea what it would look like, no idea if it was even here, no idea, even, if he was either dreading or hoping to find it.

"You mean like the ones you just threw back down on the table?"

"No..." Sherlock shook his head, and rumpled his hair with his hands in frustration. "It'll have been odd. You wouldn't have understood it."

He half expected his companion to be offended by that, people sometimes were when he told them they wouldn't understand something - but this time it didn't seem to be the case.

"Hang on..." John said, and Sherlock stopped mid step on to the coffee table, on his way to search the sofa cushions. "There is something."

Taking his foot down from the table, the taller man watched as his friend crossed to the mantle, picking up the birthday card that had been innocuously sitting there for two weeks. The two men met each other halfway, and John handed the card over. It was heavy white card stock, the words "Happy Birthday" were printed across it in shiny red letters. Other than that it was completely blank.

The red words triggered an emotional response that Sherlock didn't understand, and also didn't care to... But if this is what he thought it could be, then that was done with intent.

"The envelope didn't have a name."

"Why did you keep it?"

"It wasn't mine. Some of us aren't in the habit of throwing away birthday cards that were meant for other people."

"Yes, but you didn't show it to me either."

"Yes I did."

"No you didn't-" Sherlock looked at his friend. "Did you?"

"Ye-" John pointed at the card impatiently. "Is this what you were looking for?"

Sherlock turned the card over in his hands a couple of times and then brought it to his nose and sniffed at it.

"I don't know." He said before taking off abruptly in the direction of his room, John following as far as the kitchen archway. Sherlock emerged again a few moments later, shrugging his coat on. "But I suspect it isn't really blank. I'm going to need something that emits UV light."

"Sherlock-"

"Phone Lestrade. Find out whatever you can about the dead woman at Charing Cross."

The detective made his way to the top step, his friend in tow.

"Sherlock." John said again. He looked up and gave an impatient raise of his forehead. John pressed his mouth in to a line and put his hands in his pockets. "I have something that emits UV light."

Sherlock's eyebrows came together.

**...**

The dark haired man blinked once, then twice, staring at the gadget the doctor had just handed him. He'd seen this thing a few times, but never in his hand, or even in his flat. He associated it with London, though he wasn't quite certain why at first. It was something very unimportant, something repeatedly remembered, and then repeatedly deleted again. Something he'd seen in London. Something he'd seen... in a box? A man with a bowtie? His father? No, that couldn't be it. Some other man in a bowtie with a box. A blue box. A police phone-

_Oh, for God's_-

"John, is this-"

"Yes." The shorter man interrupted him sharply.

"Why?"

"It was a gift from a patient."

Sherlock continued to stare absently at his friend, who was becoming increasingly visibly agitated under the inspection.

"Look, if you press that little button, it..."

John demonstrated, and a buzzing, blinking blue light activated at the tip of the cylindrical device, "Doctor Who?" embossed along the side. Sherlock blinked again. John cleared his throat.

"He thought it was funny, because..." He looked down, and exhaled a bit. "I'm a doctor."

"Riotous." Sherlock replied monotonously. "And what exactly is the point of it?"

"It's a pen, too."

A beat.

"Listen... the blue light bit is UV."

Sherlock couldn't resist a last sidelong look at John before he sauntered off to his bedroom door, closing it to shadow the corridor in semi-darkness. He pulled the card from his pocket, and opened it. John came to stand several footsteps away, watching intently.

The coat clad man pressed the button on John's toy sonic screwdriver, which lit up again with a strange and irritating whir, and hovered it over the blank card.

No, not blank.

Sherlock let the button go, and the hallway fell silent again. Looking up at the doctor, his eyes only saw through him, his hands stiffening slightly around the paper - crumpling it just a bit. If the letter hadn't been here, he wouldn't have known anything about her safety at all. He would have had to guess at whether or not she was okay, or whether or not she was scared… but this left no room for guessing, no room for wondering. His heart threatened to stop as his eyes began to burn.

"Does it say something?" John asked.

He didn't answer.

"Sherlock," his friend started, becoming impatient. "Does it-"

"Find me." Sherlock interrupted in a low, painful, grumble.

Both men looked suddenly toward the staircase, as a crashing noise emitted from the lower floor. Sherlock took an exasperated breath and rolled his eyes as he walked to the top of the steps to meet Emma Clarke's livid grandfather rushing up to him as quickly as could be expected from a man his age. Sherlock clasped his hands behind his back.

"Bad ne-"

What Sherlock was about to say was, "bad news?" Which was, of course, unnecessary, seeing as he already knew the news the man and his wife had just received. There wasn't much to deduce here, but Sherlock assumed that there was some misplaced anger - but since he had recently been so artfully rude to the man's granddaughter, that anger was able to find a target.

Not that any of it mattered.

Sherlock found himself, not for the first time in his life, tackled to the ground just inside the sitting room of his flat - John Watson racing over to pull the old man off him.

"Oi!" He yelled, his hands about to reach out for the old man's arms when he, who by now had Sherlock by the collar of his coat, looked at John.

"My daughter's dead." He articulated simply, but the anguish was unmistakable. It made Sherlock inherently uncomfortable, and it would have even if all that anguish were not currently finding an outlet on his person.

John stared agape, that peculiar mix of incredulity and awe that was very singular to him upon his face, before relaxing his stance and clearing his throat.

"Right then." He said, giving what appeared to Sherlock as a relenting nod. The old man looked back at his captive who, for his part, stared with shock at his friend.

Sherlock cocked his head.

"John?" He asked.

Then the old man punched the detective in the face - hard enough to knock him unconscious, as it turned out... Which was also not a first for Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

><p><strong>One Month Earlier...<strong>

A tune lilted in and around Sherlock's mind. It wasn't unusual; music always helped him to think... His thoughts were somewhere else, however, and he didn't even concern himself with where the music was coming from. He let the notes, short and stilted, come to him one by one, each with their own whisper - a new idea upon every fresh yet familiar sound.

_I took your pulse. _

The thought whirled slowly and circuitously through his head, constantly being replaced with some other thought; only to come back round again the way that cream did when it was poured in a cup of tea. It would drop heavily underneath the dark surface and disappear for a moment before reemerging and swaying side to side and then slowly clouding the liquid completely... Just as this thought was slowly clouding his Mind Palace. The corridors were going dark; the doors to different rooms were closing, and Sherlock found that his footsteps echoed resonantly against walls that seemed to be newly bare.

There was nothing in here to focus on. Nowhere in here to hide.

_I took your pulse._

Sherlock's eyes snapped open as The Woman, clinging tightly to his upper arms, whimpered slightly against his mouth. In a moment of blind confusion he thought that he could feel her heart thudding madly against his chest before coming to the alarming realization that it was his own heart beating itself raw. The tactile data strumming its way through his already addled brain was almost too much to parse through. Her lips, her hands, the wetness of her tears on his cheeks, that _sound_ that she had just made. It wasn't possible that he should be experiencing any of this, least of all with The Woman, and least of all _tonight_, but it _was_ happening.

His eyes slipping shut again, his right hand slid from her cheek and up through her hair to hold her head at the base of her neck, pulling her deeper in to this kiss that was supposed to be impossible, and a loud warning siren began to go off from somewhere inside his burning consciousness. As Irene's hands released their grip of his biceps, her arms began to encircle him in an embrace that suddenly - very suddenly - Sherlock did not want.

_No, no, no- _

Sherlock pulled away from the Woman, pulled away from her warmth and her promise, and stood up so abruptly that he had to turn around and lean on his forearm against the wall lest he fall victim to a very embarrassing bout of syncope. His breathing was approaching ragged, his lips were tingling, and he blinked and widened his eyes in turn to try and break the haze that threated to engulf him completely. After a few more harrowing moments of that, he was able at least to stand on his own.

He turned back to look at the wide-eyed woman on his bed, whose face was flushed and whose hand was up near her mouth as though she didn't believe he had been there just a short time before.

"I..." Sherlock started, and the rest of the sentence failed to materialize.

The room was silent, and Sherlock was morbidly reminded of the morgue, and then, by association, of Molly Hopper. Particularly of Molly, and then particularly of the horrible look on her face when he'd picked her apart at the Christmas party 6 months earlier. Then, of course, the image of Irene watching as Sherlock broke the code to her phone, ripping everything away from her grasping hands in one fell swoop, rose to the forefront of his concentration.

Sentiment. _Sentiment._ He didn't mean to hurt Molly, but it happened anyway, and why? Because she let him. She let him in to her heart, but what's worse is that she let him _see_ in to her heart, and then he couldn't help but hurt her. It wasn't on purpose, it was never on purpose, but it also appeared to be decidedly unavoidable... And now Irene was making the same mistake, had already made the same mistake.

She had looked away, had left herself unguarded, and her own boomerang had come back to slam her in the side of her head. She probably, even now, didn't know or understand what had hit her.

But he did. He understood completely, and he wasn't, he _wasn't_, going to make the same mistake as these two women who had given up their hearts so carelessly. He didn't even believe himself capable of it.

Sherlock refocused his eyes on The Woman as his gaze had been waning, and found that she had dropped her hand back down to her side, but her shoulders rose and fell in deep, heavy breaths. She stared up at him with an intensity that he didn't feel altogether comfortable under.

The detective let out a deep sound of frustration, throwing his hands up in anger.

"This is absurd!" He vociferated, his left hand almost immediately combing through his hair.

"Why did you do that?" The woman asked in a deceptively calm tone, though her eyes were oddly sharp as the words left her mouth.

Why did he do it? There was probably a very good reason for it, a better reason than that he was a man and that even he, occasionally, was evidently given over to incongruous loss of self-possession... But again, even that was absurd, and when it came down to it, he couldn't think of an answer. All he could do was gesture lamely at his door and say:

"Leave."

"You kissed me." Irene responded, ignoring his demand.

Sherlock scoffed a bit.

"I hadn't noticed. Now _leave_."

The Woman was silent, and Sherlock couldn't ignore the constricting of his heart as he watched the varying levels of hurt and confusion register over her face.

No, wait, he could ignore it. He _would_ ignore it. Because whatever was happening now and in this room, it wasn't who he was, and furthermore it wasn't who he wanted to be. None of this made sense to him, not his own actions or his own betraying feelings of wretchedness. He was wholly unprepared, and manifestly ill equipped, and even putting aside the fact that that alone was heretofore uncharted territory for him, he also just didn't like Irene Adler.

She was far too much like him to be likeable.

"Why did you try to hide the photo of you and your brother?"

Sherlock angled his head to one side in confusion.

"I- what?"

"The photograph of you and Mycroft as children." She gestured her head a bit toward the dresser, but didn't turn completely to look at it. "I noticed you turn it over. Why?"

Sherlock averted his gaze to the portrait of Poe hanging on his wall above where the photo in question usually stood perched, pressing his lips together. Of course she had seen it.

"I don't know." He answered truthfully, both because it was the easiest thing to do, and because he was now becoming very weary of this night and its dissonant events.

"Why do you keep it?"

For a moment, the question seemed so odd to him that it took priority over every other emotion and thought Sherlock was experiencing, and he met Irene's eyes with his own.

"I don't understand." He responded before he could stop himself.

The Woman was silent for a beat as she seemed to search Sherlock's eyes for something, and the man's heart quickened under the scrutiny of it. Others had looked over him this way before, scouring for a reason to believe him, a reason to doubt him, a reason to suspect that he was actually human... but he had never cared whether they found what they were looking for or not. Now, as Irene's eyes raked over his expression, he wasn't certain if the pain he felt that radiated from the middle of his chest out to the tip of his fingers was due to the thought that she would find what she was searching for, or that she wouldn't.

"You clearly don't like your brother." The Woman began, and her voice was markedly more professional now than it had been all night since her fall. She seemed much more like the Ms. Adler he had met back in her home in Belgravia. "Is it admiration or caution that's earned him a place along side Mr. Poe and the elements?" She finished, her eyes traveling to the periodic chart that hung next to his door.

Sherlock blinked, and by the time the blink was over, his face had smoothed in to an impassive mask.

"Caution?" He asked, raising his head a bit, and his demeanor was now business like as well.

"Not even Doctor Watson has merited the honor." She went on, ignoring his inquiry.

Sherlock furrowed his brow. "Why would I keep a picture of John in my bedroom?"

The woman looked at him sharply.

"Why do you keep a picture of your brother?"

When Sherlock said nothing, The Woman pushed herself up from the bed and walked around it, passed the man whom she was very thoroughly confusing, and went to stand in front of his drawers.

"I have- well, _had_, a photograph of my mother on a shelf in my closet." She said as she righted the frame and looked over its contents. "We were never close, her and I..." She looked at Sherlock, and while she gave the appearance that she believed what she spoke about was something no more important than the rain outside, he knew better. "I hated her, in fact."

Sherlock swallowed.

"Fascinating." He said blandly, though his voice cracked slightly. The Woman quirked down the sides of her mouth in a nonverbal shrug, before turning back to the photo.

"Isn't it?" She asked. "The things we do in the name of what you call sentiment. Keeping pictures of people we hate, changing the passwords to our phones to the names of people we-" She cut herself off there, and laughed a small, unhappy laugh. "Hate." She finished. Sherlock's heart seemed to contract at that, and The Woman looked at him again. "So, why do you keep this here?"

"Why did you keep the picture of your mother?" Sherlock countered, though he could guess. He was deflecting, because he understood now what she was getting at, and he wasn't in the mood to play anymore.

Why did he keep the picture of Mycroft and him? Irene had been correct on both counts. He admired his brother, though he would never admit it aloud. The older Holmes was clever and powerful, and Sherlock was satisfied that if he should have to have a sibling at all, that he should be someone like Mycroft. As for caution... the photograph was, in part, a reminder that there were a select few out in the world who could get the better of him if he wasn't careful, and his brother was one of them. Though the photograph was innocuous enough, the two of them standing straight with stoic expressions, their arms at their sides, it remained a note to keep his enemies close.

"Because I loved her." Irene responded simply as though she weren't contradicting her previous statement.

An odd thing occurred just then, which was Sherlock realizing he had been slowly closing the distance between he and The Woman, and that he was now standing beside her.

He turned the photo back over, and then turned to Irene, who kept her eyes on where the frame had been standing straight a moment before.

"That's unfortunate." He said, and he wasn't sure to what part of this whole affair he was referring.

"That I loved my mother," she started, then turned to look up at the man who had destroyed her life. "Or just that I've ever loved anyone at all?"

A beat, and then in a low voice Sherlock responded, once again with:

"Leave."

The Woman's placid mask faded, and her eyes were full of grief once again.

"Do you really want me dead?" It was a question, but it sounded more like a plea to his ears.

There were quite a few things Sherlock wanted in that moment. He wanted to be anywhere other than here, for a start. He wanted to be out on the streets of London chasing a cabbie through streetlights and odd turns. He wanted to be on a rooftop looking for signs that weren't visible at ground level. He wanted to be eating dinner at a chip shop with John - he wanted to be doing anything other than what he was doing, because what he _really_ wanted to be doing was something that he couldn't quite grasp with the experiences and vocabulary available to him... he only knew that he didn't want Irene dead. He didn't want her hurt. He didn't want her to leave.

"No." He let out from behind painfully grit teeth before wrapping his arm around her waist and crushing her against his body, dropping his face to meet hers and meeting her mouth with his own.

She pulled away.

"What are you-"

He caught her mouth again, and she stiffened for a moment in shock, or reservation, or whatever it was, but it didn't matter, because it was only for a moment, and then she was sliding her tongue against his - forcing emotions and sensations upon him that he had never known existed. He found that he was pressing her against the wooden dresser behind her, needing something to push her closer in to his body. He'd never wanted to be this close to another human, physically or otherwise, and now there was nothing he wanted more.

Quickly, conflicting thoughts and desires battled their way through his already war torn mind. He did want this, but he didn't want to want it, which meant, at least in part, that he didn't want it.

He could dissect this. He just needed a moment. He needed to collect himself.

Irene's hands were in his hair, and his hands were cradling her face - his thumbs against her chin, and his fingers splayed across her cheeks. Oh, God, he didn't know what this was. He didn't know what any of this was.

Why did he want this? He'd have to admit that he liked the feel of it to continue any sort of analysis. Fine, done. He liked the feel of it. It wasn't abnormal, he reasoned. It wasn't even abnormal for him. While drugs had never been something he exactly did for the euphoric effects, he'd be lying to himself if he tried to act as though he didn't enjoy them. He wasn't above that sort of thing, and so now he wasn't above this sort of thing.

She groaned in to his hair something that may have been his name, but was more incoherent syllables, as he pressed kisses along her throat. What was he trying to do? Was he still trying to think? How could he think when The Woman was so perfectly and brilliantly _here _and his?

He found her mouth again, swallowing her shuddering whimper as he did so. Okay, he'd think about why he did want this later. There was more to why he wanted it than didn't want it, he guessed, so deconstructing it from the ground up was clearly the more viable option.

He didn't want this, because he'd _never_ wanted this. Though, even with that thought still coursing its way round his head, he pressed himself hard against The Woman, his hands bracing themselves against the wooden drawers behind her.

Wait, where was he? Yes. He'd never wanted this, and continuing to not want this was more in line with his own characterization of himself. But that couldn't be the whole of it, could it? There was a hollow pain in the center of his chest when he attempted to prod further, and he knew that there was a much more pressing reason.

Irene pulled her mouth away from Sherlock's, her forehead resting against his, and her gaze burning in to his light blue eyes.

"Why do you keep that picture in here?" She asked breathlessly, and there was something devious in the question, but he couldn't force himself to care for the moment. He smiled, though it was a smile that didn't reach passed his mouth.

"Why did you make my name your passcode?" He asked almost mockingly, even now able to feel a small amount of anger from the night's earlier activities flare up inside of him.

The two of them stared at each other dangerously for a few infinite moments, both pairs of shoulders rising and falling with their harsh intakes of breath, before Irene broke eye contact and pushed through Sherlock's embrace to stand a bit away from him. He held the now free hand up for a moment as she walked away, before replacing it back against his dresser continuing to brace his weight against it, staring forward for a second longer, before turning his head to place his half lidded eyes back on her.

"I'm not a school girl with a crush." Irene said, squaring her shoulders.

Sherlock let go of the dresser, and leaned back up against his wall, his head tilted up, but his eyes still focused on her.

"No," he agreed, and felt that there was more to add, but had nothing more to say.

"What is it that you want from me, Mr. Holmes?"

He didn't know. His usual methods were completely failing him in this instance, and he felt lost - more lost than he could define or account for. There was nothing in his past to help him understand what he was dealing with, nothing within his grasp to aid him in working through the murky territory he now found himself irrevocably afloat in. He didn't know how it was possible to want two things absolutely that could not exist one with the other.

He hated her for this.

"I want you out of my head." He answered bitingly with the only thing he was certain of at the moment.

The Woman smirked as though she thought his response foolish.

"And what about your heart?"

Sherlock's lips pulled up in to a contemptuous smile. "Don't be a child." He said cruelly. "I don't make the mistake of thinking with my heart."

She stepped toward him, and he didn't trust it. He didn't trust her, and he didn't trust himself with her. He realized, with not a little terror, that he was shaking.

"Then why do you keep that picture in your room?"

Sherlock stood away from the wall and met The Woman's hard stare with his own, imposing his height over hers, though he said nothing. Finally, Irene broke eye contact with an impatient noise of disappointment before abruptly beginning to cross the floor to the door.

This was it, he knew. Whatever she had been searching for in his face and actions had not been there, and he'd disappointed her, hurt her, and now she was leaving. He'd broken her down, and had broken her heart, had humiliated her and ruined her chances at whatever life she'd hoped to have, and still she'd shown up here to... to what? To give him a chance to... _what_? It didn't matter, because she was on her way out of his bedroom and out of his life, and he'd never see her again. If he let her walk out of 221B now, she was lost to him forever.

She was probably lost to him forever anyway.

No. He couldn't bear it anymore than he could have borne losing John that night at the pool, or losing his brother's faith tonight in the study. He cared for very few people in this world, and it was hard earned for each of them... It was shown to John in the way of respect, it was shown to Mycroft in the way of a simple photograph in a simple frame, and he would show it to Irene right now and tonight in the only way he would ever have the chance to. Before he knew what he was doing, he had her by the wrist, and had pulled her back against him. Her eyes were wide and alert.

"You can't do this, and take it back." She said, warningly.

And as his mouth descended on hers for the third time in the same night, his heart feeling as though it would burst from the strain, he knew that she was right.

**...**

**Notes:**

I didn't make up the photograph of Mycroft and Sherlock. Mark Gatiss has said that it's somewhere in Sherlock's room, though no one has really ever seen it. There are some blurry pictures out there that suggest the photo sits atop Sherlock's dresser in the corner of the room, so I took that idea and ran with it. I love the idea of him having a photo of him and his brother in his room, and the thought process behind keeping it there.

Anyway, fair warning: The next chapter will be written specifically for a mature audience!


	3. Entry Point

**Chapter Rating: M  
>Author's Note: <strong>This chapter is intended for a mature audience!**  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 3: Entry Point<strong>**  
><strong>

**...**

Something inside of him hurt.

There was a feeling that Sherlock rarely had occasion to feel, but one that he still felt often enough to where he was, at the very least, familiar with it. It was nearly the same sensation that came over him any time it became apparent during a game of chess, sometimes only two moves in, that he was going to lose. _Two _moves in, and the strategy could _already_ be irreparably flawed, and he'd know it. It was the same for when he managed to fall a step behind a criminal, or when a missing piece of a puzzle was failing to fall in to place. It was frustration and disappointment, but it was also more than that. It was something more emotional than cerebral, and therefore just beyond his understanding.

It was how he felt now as he pressed The Woman against his bedroom wall, his lips against hers, pinning her hands to the wall by her wrists at either side of her head.

He'd lost something tonight, or was in the middle of losing something currently. If he were another man, and Irene another woman, perhaps all of this would have felt much different. There would have been promise; the hope of something more... but now there was only a vague sense that this, whatever this was, was only going to make things, whatever things _were_, worse.

Sherlock released Irene's left hand so that he could bury the fingers of his right in to her hair. She pulled away from his mouth, breathing hoarsely.

"Sherlock, I-"

He caught her mouth with eager lips before she could finish her sentence. He didn't want to hear what she was going to say. Hearing his name spoken in her gasping tone was almost too much as it was. It hurt. All of this hurt, and he couldn't understand why.

Using her newly freed hand, The Woman began quickly pinching the buttons of Sherlock's shirt unclasped, and he could feel his heart begin to pound harder at several different points of his body - some that he was used to, and some that he very decidedly was not. Intellectually he knew that this was all headed somewhere that he had never been before, but the synapses weren't connecting, and he couldn't follow his own thoughts to conclusion.

He tried to think about this situation logically: He was certainly kissing Irene Adler, and he must have been enjoying it otherwise he would have stopped... There still remained, of course, the odd pain that he was feeling, which did not seem to be coming from anywhere in particular, or seem to be _caused_ by anything in particular. Assuredly, it was due, in part, to kissing Irene... Though, since he still didn't stop, it must have been worth it to keep going.

Sherlock released Irene's other hand, and immediately it went to join the other in unbuttoning his shirt until it lay completely open at his waist along with his suit jacket. Her hands ran up the length of his back underneath the fabric and then around down the sides of his abdomen, the muscle there unconsciously contracting under her touch. A moment later, she was untucking the shirt and pushing it and his jacket off of his body, and Sherlock absentmindedly helped her with a few quick shrugs of his shoulders.

The cold air hit him instantly, and though he had never much liked the cold, he invited it now. It was grounding to feel something so recognizable when everything else had become clouded by uncertainty.

He gripped The Woman by her hip and pulled her away from the wall, his other hand going to the zipper at the back of her dress - another first for him in a night riddled with new experiences. As he pulled the metal slowly down the zip at her back, The Woman moaned in to Sherlock's mouth and he found himself pulling away from the kiss to stare in to her storming blue eyes. It was suddenly necessary to see the expression on her face, to see if it mirrored his own... but it didn't. Her eyes were wide, and her pupils were dilated so that there was nearly no blue visible, but she didn't look worried or stricken with reservation.

"It's okay..." She whispered, running her hand through his hair, and then down to caress his cheek.

But it wasn't okay.

It wasn't okay as he turned The Woman slightly and pushed her backward on to the bed. It wasn't okay as he pulled the tacky black fabric of her dress down her shoulders, his heart thudding agonizingly, and it wasn't okay as she lifted her hips so that he could pull her dress the rest of the way down her body.

This wasn't okay. She loved him and in turn he'd ruined her, and now... now she was ruining him.

Sherlock took in deep breaths as he raked his eyes over the semi nude form of Irene Adler. She swallowed as his eyes made their way over her lace-concealed breasts and down her torso, and over her abdomen for a moment before locking his eyes with hers. He'd seen her completely naked already, but this was so different and so removed from that experience. She had been someone else then, had been wearing a different face... but this was just The Woman. _The_ Woman.

"Disguise is always a self portrait." He said quietly almost without meaning to. He caught the look of confusion that flickered over The Woman's face briefly before he leaned back in to reclaim the kiss he realized he'd been missing ever since he released her lips from his own.

He rode the surge of adrenaline with a groan, pressing Irene's body into his bed. It occurred to him that if this wasn't okay the way he kept telling himself it wasn't, that he could simply stop... but it was the thought of stopping that triggered the worst of the pain, and he realized that it wasn't what he was doing with Irene now that was causing him distress... It was what he had already done.

He had done deep damage to The Woman that now appeared to be his whole world as he pressed his bare torso against her black lace, and there would never be any way to make amends.

He could kiss her until her lips were raw, hold her until he trembled from the effort, he could even let her stay with him here tonight, tomorrow, or for a year... But what he'd done to her was permanent, and the hurt he'd caused her was likely to become a part of her and her personal mythology. He'd changed her life and therefor her... and there was something horribly tragic about that, because he missed her even as her skin burned in to his. He knew that he could never let her leave after this, but that he would _have_ to.

He'd already done one impossible thing tonight, and there wasn't room in his life for another.

Irene was pushing Sherlock up and away from her so that all his weight was braced on the palms of his hands, and for a moment he felt panic at the loss of contact, which in turn sent him in to a deeper panic at the idea that he could be so effected by her... and then he realized what was happening. Her hands went to the button of his trousers, and he looked down in to her eyes that were openly questioning. She wasn't moving, but her fingers were poised and ready. Did she want his permission?

"I don't..." His sentence trailed off before he could tell her what "he didn't" as she unclasped the button at her fingertips, which was just as well, because he didn't really have a clue as to what he was going to say. He was at a loss, and he was in a state of alarm that he didn't believe he'd ever felt... And while it was something close to frightening, it was also something close to incredible.

It wasn't love. He couldn't possibly be in love...

But his mind, ever sensible and ever logical rejoined with a voice that sounded suspiciously and irritatingly like his brother...

_How would you know?_

Dear God, this couldn't be love...

"Don't look so frightened." The Woman said, and Sherlock focused his eyes back on her flushed face, noting the teasing smirk upon her lips. "I don't bite."

Sherlock tilted his head.

"No?" He asked, and wasn't pleased to find that his voice was low and breathy.

He could stop. He could stop right now, and end this. He didn't have to submit to his feelings this way... but then The Woman's teasing grin spread in to a real smile that lit her features up brighter than if he had held a candle to her face...

And Sherlock knew he was damned.

"Not unless you ask." She responded, slowly unzipping Sherlock's trousers. He shivered then either at the cold or what her words promised, but he didn't care which. It didn't matter.

He wanted her. He knew he wanted her, and his actions up to this point had admitted it before his thoughts did now. There was nothing left to hold on to save her, and nothing left to do but give in entirely, and the moment he relented he felt a brief measure of peace before being utterly overwhelmed by what must have been arousal (what, indeed, it must have been this whole time), and it was more than intoxicating.

He could understand, finally, why so many people had lost themselves to lust and sentiment.

_And love? _The voice mocked, but Sherlock adamantly ignored it.

Sherlock leaned down to The Woman, nuzzling a line from the hollow of her throat up to her ear where he stopped and whispered:

"I'm _asking_."

She let out an exhale at that, as though she'd been holding her breath... and perhaps she had been.

Irene pushed herself up, wrapped her leg around the detective and, without much trouble, expertly rolled the two of them over so that she was straddling his thighs, but not sitting on them. Sherlock watched with wide eyes as she proceeded to pull his trousers down his legs, and watched himself as he lifted his own hips to help her along. It was as though his body was in control now, and Sherlock was thankful because it seemed to know what to do where his brain certainly did not. The Woman quickly rid him of his shoes, his socks, and then roughly pulled his trousers over his ankles, and discarded them over the back of the bed where they were immediately forgotten.

A moment later she was on top of him again, sitting on his lap with a seductive smile, her eyes half lidded.

"Now..." She said, her voice steady and direct, running her nails softly down his chest. "What are you asking for?"

Sherlock caught her hand by the wrist as it hovered over the waist band of his pants, and the vaguely playful expression on her face gave way to one of confusion.

"You." Sherlock responded to her, hoping that she would understand his meaning without need of an explanation. He didn't want what everyone else got. He didn't want a show, or a professional. He wanted _his_ Irene Adler.

Her eyes went back and fourth across his face, and then they seemed to soften.

She understood him. Of course she did.

"You have me." She said, and the plain honesty written all over her was almost heartbreaking. Sherlock couldn't take being so far away from her any longer, and so he reached up to the back of her neck and pulled her back down to him. Their mouths came together in a way that Sherlock had not experienced yet tonight, or ever, and the heat and longing was unmistakable from both sides. Keeping one hand tangled in her hair as it fell over his face and shoulders, he slid his other palm up her back to the clasp of her bra. With a pinch of his thumb and index finger, the undergarment game undone, and he moved both hands to the straps to slowly move the material down her arms - brushing the backs of his fingers down her skin as he went. He could feel small bumps begin to rise at his touch, and deepening the sensuous kiss he and The Woman shared was all he could do to keep from swearing his unending devotion to her then and there.

Frantically now, Irene was pulling at his pants, and Sherlock raised his hips once again to help her clumsily pull them down his body to a point where he could kick them the rest of the way off, while also helping her shed the last bit of lace that separated the two of them. As the black panties slid down her calves, the blue eyed man took deep shuddering breaths, trying to compose himself - trying to make sense of what was happening; of what was about to happen.

"Sherlock," Irene gasped as she sat atop him, their bodies finally completely touching. "I want you..."

And he wanted her, too, terribly.

"You..." He swallowed, his breath catching just for a moment. "Have me."

The two of them were silent and still at that, staring in to each other's eyes. Maybe she was trying to read the full meaning of what he had just said, but it was pointless, because even he was unsure of it. He only knew that he meant it.

He needed her now. Right now.

The Woman must have sensed the urgency in his tenseness, or perhaps she could see it in his face... but just as he felt he couldn't bear not being with her a moment longer, she reached between their bodies and gripped him in her hand. Sherlock's breath became labored and unsteady as he watched Irene steady herself with her free hand on his chest, knowing that this moment was about to change everything for him.

The Woman pitched her hips forward, a gasp escaping her mouth, and Sherlock's eyes slid shut of their own volition.

_Dear God..._

A torrent of new sensations crashed upon the detective in unrelenting waves. The ache in his chest was nearing unbearable, though it was different now than it had been before... but he felt comforted at the same time. However, that emotion was quickly becoming less and less relevant against the physical sensation of being wrapped in warmth and...

A moan ripped itself from Sherlock's throat as The Woman began moving over him in a rocking motion, back and fourth - each new stroke of her body eliciting feelings of intense pleasure and need. He couldn't understand how something could feel so... _good_. He'd experimented with quite a few recreational substances, had even had a brief stint with addiction, but nothing had ever come close to this. Nothing had ever touched upon this burning desire inside of him. He had never even known he was capable of this level of _feeling_, either emotionally or physically. He opened his eyes, and pressed his lips together, his teeth digging in to the lower, at the sight before him.

Irene's head was thrown back, her hair grazing against his thighs, one hand still pressed against his chest, the other bracing her weight on his knee, as she rolled her body forward at a mesmerizing pace. Sherlock gripped her hips with both hands, feeling her muscles work as she moved.

It was entirely impossible that this should be happening. It couldn't have been more than 2 and a half hours earlier that he was stripping her bear of all her defenses and pretenses, of every lie she had thought to tell him. He had wanted to show her what it felt like to be at the mercy of another's game, of another's intellect... and he had. He had completely destroyed her, and had never expected to see her again, so _how_? How was it that he was again finding himself under her expert control and completely at her mercy?

Then The Woman began to move in a pivoting motion that sent shivers down the detective's spine, and any thought as to "how" this had happened was completely banished from his mind.

Never mind the how. It was happening, and that was all that mattered... And he couldn't deny, not even for a moment, that he felt something deeply for the woman on top of him, and he wanted to show her. For the first time in his life, he wanted to show another person that they meant something to him, and what's more... He wanted to use his body to do it.

"Look at me." Sherlock said, and it came out more demanding than he had meant it to. The Woman lowered her head and opened her eyes, but continued to move against him, her body forcing his to contract and burn beautifully.

"Yes, Mr. Holmes?" She asked, and the sound of her voice was a caress that he briefly closed his eyes against.

He slid his hands up from her hips to her waist, relishing the feel of her smooth skin against his palms.

"Tell me..." she moved roughly against him at that, and he grunted at the new wave of pleasure. She smiled almost lazily at him. "Tell me what you want."

She tilted her head a bit, her motion slowing but not halting. She moved her hand slowly from his chest to rest on his left hand against her skin and entwined her fingers within his... Sherlock lay transfixed as slowly, very slowly, she skimmed his palm up along her torso, and then pushed it up against her breast. His other hand came up unconsciously to cup the other, and Irene leaned back on to both arms on either side of Sherlock's legs.

He gently caressed the soft flesh in both of his hands, feeling the skin become taut underneath his fingers. He was so engrossed in the wonderful weight and feel of them that he hardly noticed Irene whispering his name once and then twice- her back arched in to his touch.

God, she was heart achingly beautiful. He wanted her for his own. He needed her to be his... There was no alternative, no other way it could be. A mind like hers would be wasted on anyone else. _Irene Adler_ would be wasted on anyone else. She had to be in the company of someone who would appreciate every facet of her being - more than her body, more than her beauty, she was an anomaly in a world where a graduate degree was the accepted height of intelligence. It was no wonder she had to misbehave to find a place where she fit - of course this world didn't accept her. She was better than it, beyond it. She was like him.

Sherlock suddenly wrapped his arms around her back, and pulled her down to rest against him - the softness of her chest touching the firmness of his for the first time. A muffled noise of pleasure left her lips and floated to his ears as he held her tightly to him. Her sweat slicked body continued to writhe mercilessly against his, and he knew that he was already close to completion... He had never understood what the uproar had been about when it came to sex or making love, or whatever term one chose to apply, but now he couldn't understand why he had deprived himself of it for so long.

Of course, he had not met The Woman until recently, and if he was being honest with himself, he could not imagine himself needing or wanting any other person this way.

Dammit, he had given in in every way except for falling in love. He wouldn't do that. Giving her his body seemed easy in retrospect. It was, after all, _only_ his body. His mind, however? He couldn't let anyone close to his mind, because that was who he really was. His body was merely a physical vessel for use in the aid of collecting data... His mind was what sorted through that data; his mind was what _actually_ lived. He wouldn't give that up. His mind _was_ his heart, and she couldn't have it...

Sherlock moved his hand up to caress the back of The Woman's head, moving his face so that his lips were near her ear, though he said nothing - _could_ say nothing. He merely panted and grunted, grimacing against the emotions and physical sensations that were quickly becoming too much to bear.

Irene's thighs tensed and tightened around him. She pulled away from his embrace and sat up, holding her weight with both palms pressed against his chest. He watched her, teeth firmly planted in his lower lip, his eyes alternating between being wide open and then clenched shut. Her eyes slid closed and remained closed, intensely provocative sounds escaping constantly from her open mouth. Sherlock's gaze remained fixed on her with a mix of fear and wonder.

She was perfect. Absolutely perfect...

And she was going to be the end of him.

Without thinking, Sherlock took hold of Irene, and rolled the two of them over so that he was now on top of her. Her eyes were wide with surprise, but a satisfied smile played on her lips for a moment - and only for a moment, before Sherlock continued on in the pace that she had set for him.

"Oh, God..." She murmured, throwing her head back on to the pillow, and Sherlock pressed his face in to her neck. He pressed an open mouth kiss on the skin he found there, before finding her lips with his and kissing her deeply and slowly. Her hands buried themselves in his hair, holding his mouth to hers, as one leg wrapped itself around his thigh.

She pulled away, another moan escaping her. Sherlock pushed himself up on to one forearm, and felt his way down her body with his free hand, starting at the hollow of her neck, moving down her breasts, her flat stomach, and then to the point where their bodies met.

He watched her face closely as he pressed his fingers to her sensitive flesh, watched as her mouth fell open wordlessly, her eyes squeezed shut and her face contorting in to an expression that was almost reflective of pain, but one that he knew was quite the opposite. He continued rock his body at a steady pace, his own eyes sliding closed at the pleasure.

"Irene." He whispered... and with that, he could feel her muscles tense and shudder around him, her leg pressing against his thigh.

"Sherlock!" She gasped in a high-pitched tone he had not yet heard from her, as her hands gripped the bed sheets underneath her.

He kept his pace, dropping his face to the pillow beside The Woman's head - the fire that had been building inside of him setting loose on the whole of his being. Every inch of his body, starting from the inside out, from his heart to his fingertips, burst in to flames.

He loved her. Dear God, he _loved_ her.

He couldn't remember why he was hurting, or why she was here. He couldn't remember any of the whys or the hows, or the painful truths of their circumstance... He just knew, as his body burst against hers, that he needed her more than he had ever needed anything, more than _any _man had ever needed anything. And he was losing her now, just as he was gaining her.

And it was _his_ fault.

Why had he tried to deny it? Why had he denied to himself for so many years that he was capable of this kind of emotion? Could he have saved himself or Irene from the trouble? Or the pain?

The intensity of these thoughts began to subside almost as soon as it had emerged, though the thoughts themselves remained as Sherlock panted in to the pillow. The Woman's hand gently ran up and down his back, and he became suddenly aware that he was resting all of his weight on top of her. He pushed himself up, and then off of her, and laid himself on his back next to her on the bed.

He swallowed as he stared up at the ceiling, his mind in a haze, his heart decidedly breaking. He couldn't bring himself to look at her.

"I..." He started, though his throat was dry. "I'm sorry." He went on. "Forgive me."

The Woman shifted on the bed next to him, positioning herself on her side so that she faced him.

"No." She responded.

_No._ Sherlock thought. _Of course not._

**...**

**TBC**

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><p><strong>End Notes: <strong>

What I was trying to get across here is Sherlock's crushing ambivalence. I didn't want this to be easy for him...

Thanks, as always, for reading! I appreciate it more than my meager supply of words will allow me to express. Now, onward to part 4!


	4. Exit Wounds

**Author's Note: **First off I would like to extend a sincere and extremely heartfelt thank you to the readers and the reviewers (the lovers, the dreamers) of this story. I know this particular pairing is not very popular when held up against other relationships in the fandom, but the response to "Come Attrition" from a wonderful and vocal minority has left me speechless at times. I feel like I'm not just writing a piece of fan fiction, but a real story with real people _really_ invested in it. This is an incredible fandom, so thank you so much for opening your arms and minds to my words.

Second off, I mentioned before that I'm going to be jumping back and fourth a bit. However, to avoid confusion, the night in Sherlock's bedroom is always the touchstone. Every other point in time is always going to be somewhere on the timeline in relation to that night. :)

Thanks again for all the awesome support! I hope you guys enjoy this installment!

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><p><strong>Chapter 4: Exit Wounds<strong>

**...**

**7 Months Later**

There were only two emails in his inbox, both over half a year old, and both long since committed to memory... Which didn't stop Sherlock Holmes from rereading them now.

The first, only four words long, had been of singular and needed consolation when he had initially received it:

_Let me come forward._

She wouldn't have done unless he asked her to, and she certainly would have if he did. It would have meant her discovery and likely her death, but she would have done it anyway. For him.

The second email was much longer, and one that he often read to himself even when there was no computer or mobile device available, when all he had was his mind for company and his memory of her for solace.

He was dead now. Well, at least for all intents and purposes. Sherlock Holmes had jumped off the roof of a building, and the man who now walked about the world with his face was little more than a ghost. A whisper. A rumor. He was alone, and necessarily so. It had been weeks since his last communication with his brother, and months since he'd last spoken to Molly. He was truly disappearing now, as was always the plan.

Now he sat in a dark corner of an Internet cafe looking over his nearly empty inbox, reading the only two emails that had ever been sent to this address. It had been set up with the sole purpose of being a point of contact between he and The Woman if (and only _if_, seeing as how electronic mail was about as far away from secure as one could get) correspondence was absolutely urgent and time sensitive.

_Let me come forward._

That had been sent during the worst of it, when Richard Brook was wreaking havoc on his reputation and his life. When the vicious headlines were daily, and not a soul save John Watson was on his side. Of course, that was always what was supposed to happen. He and Mycroft had planned for this, had allowed for the probability that Jim Moriarty would try to destroy Sherlock's name given the fact that all he ever wanted when in custody was information on the younger Holmes. They had both known it would most likely come to defamation... The only thing they hadn't allowed for was how it would actually _feel_ once it came to pass. After all, why would they have? The detective had made it clear on numerous occasions that he was beyond caring.

... But he couldn't have known how thorough and unrelenting it was going to be, and wading through the ruins of his reputation in those last days was agonizing.

Though he hadn't responded to her then, and though he would never have asked her to come forward to prove who Moriarty was, the email had been heartening. The Woman believed in him and would have risked her life to defend his name - had even risked being caught just by sending the email. This placed her securely in the very small and personally revered group of people that consisted previously of only John Watson and Molly Hooper. She had become so much more with those four words than she had even been before.

And what she had been _before_ was the only woman he had ever loved.

The second email had come after the fall that she had so prudently foreseen that night in his bedroom. After the papers and the television had publicly announced his suicide. Where the first was short and sweet, the second was lingering and painful. He had not thought of The Woman as he pushed his life as he knew it away with a phone call and a jump, but then he couldn't have afforded to at the time. He knew what he was giving up, knew, indeed, that he could be gone for years... And all he could allow himself to think about was the matter at hand. Moriarty's network had to be destroyed.

Then the message came one week later, when he was already well out of London... And it had made him utterly useless to himself and the world for all of an hour. Just an hour... He gave it to himself. He allowed it. He had earned it. An hour of heartsickness and longing. An hour where he would have done anything to see the face of John Watson, or to sip a cup of tea poured by Mrs. Hudson, or to see the look of impossible loyalty on Molly's face. An hour of wishing he were anybody else but Sherlock Holmes...

_I realize now that it was always too late for us... but I did hope. I don't know what I hoped for, but I liked to think that you did, too, in your own way. I like to think that you did love me, even if you most likely didn't. I like to think you're still here, even though you're not. I'd do anything to make you stay, but you've left already. I must say it was quite selfish of you, jumping off a building like that. All you had to do was ask, didn't you know? I would have... I don't know what I would have, but now we'll never know. Well. Isn't that just the way life goes? I suppose you'll never read this, will you? Then I'll tie it up, because I'm good at tying things up and letting things go, but I do have one request. Just one._

Please. Please don't be dead. Let's have dinner.

Now, Sherlock clicked the window closed and sat back in the uncomfortable plastic chair, knowing that he couldn't stay here much longer, but unable to stand up for the moment. That email, sent so many months ago, still had the singular ability to completely incapacitate him, and for quite a few reasons. Firstly, she had asked almost the exact thing that John had asked at his empty gravesite.

_Don't. Be. Dead.  
><em>  
>He had initially thought this to be an odd coincidence, but then it occurred to him that the people he inspired loyalty in had to have at least a few things in common... And not wanting him to be dead just happened to be one of them.<p>

Another reason he was always stunned in to paralysis after looking through the email was the fact that she had admitted that she had hoped that he had actually loved her. Every time he looked over it, he wanted to contact her and tell her that he wasn't dead, and _of course_ he loved her. He wanted to repeat it over and over until he was blue from the lack of oxygen. He wanted their few stolen moments back so that he could beg her to stay just as she begged him to stay in her message... But he didn't. _He wouldn't._ He knew what he had given up in letting her leave him, and that he would never, _never_, have it again.

The first time he'd read this email, he had allowed himself an hour, and then had pushed it away from his thoughts and his heart... But this time, he swore to himself he would never read it again, because now, _especially_ now, when he was so alone and there was so much work to be done, and his hands shook from exhaustion and from the torment of longing for so many things that he could not hope to have...

He wished he had never met her.

* * *

><p><strong>7 Months Earlier<strong>

**...**

Sherlock still couldn't bring himself to turn and look The Woman in the eyes, though he had a feeling that she was waiting for him to do so. His body was still tingling from her touch; every nerve ending was still humming from the sensation of release... But he felt empty now. He felt like he had lost everything that she had given him, everything she had offered him... and all before he had ever really had it. Whatever pain he had been feeling before was nothing compared to what he was feeling now.

"We..." He started, and then couldn't find the words to express to her that he felt that they "shouldn't" have done what they had just done... because every way the sentence ended in his mind it came out sounding cruel, and he didn't want to be cruel. He wanted to be direct and truthful, but not cruel. Not now.

"Oh, you're trying to take it back." Irene said casually. "I told you that you couldn't do that."

Sherlock clenched his eyes shut as The Woman's hand came to rest on his forearm, both at the touch of his over sensitive skin, and at her words.

He couldn't think of anything to say. She was right in more ways than she knew. He couldn't take back what they had just done anymore than he could take back his frightful introspective admission of love. Putting that aside, however, he was beginning to feel something much worse than regret... He knew that he could never tell her how he felt, and that he was going to have to make her leave for her sake and for his own... And he was going to have to do it soon.

She was going to leave here hating him, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Sherlock sat up and threw his legs over the side of his bed, his feet making contact with the floor; Irene's touch still burning in to his forearm.

"That was..." He started, but again could not find the words.

"Go on..." She prodded. Sherlock took a deep breath.

"Ill-advised."

The heartbroken man flinched at his own words, but then resolved to steel himself against his emotions in the next moment. He had made a mistake; had let lust and emotion cloud his judgment... But he wasn't going to continue on making bad decisions by being some sort of ridiculous lovelorn fool. There was no point in that, least of all because as hard as he might try to look, there was no place for The Woman at 221B Baker Street. There was no place for her in Britain. She had made certain of that.

_He_ had made certain of that.

To Sherlock's surprise, Irene laughed at that. Out of sheer confusion, he finally turned to look at her, his eyebrows knit together in a frown. He was dismayed to find that the light had completely gone from her eyes. Whatever they had just held for him, they didn't now. She was already beginning to distance herself. He didn't want this.

"I'm sorry." She said off of his look, holding her hand to her chest. "It's just that... I never thought I'd fall victim to this particular cliché."

"What?" He asked flatly.

"Oh, you know." She responded, stretching languidly on the bed. "Give a man what he wants, and then he'll discard you like a-"

"That's _not_ what this was." Sherlock interrupted, hurt and offended, though he was trying his very best to be neither.

"Oh?" She asked, her eyes widening in mock disbelief. "Then you're not currently trying to reason with yourself... This was just a one off, a mistake, you weren't _thinking_?"

Sherlock swallowed.

"No, I..."

Nothing. No words would come.

"'No, you' _what_, Mr. Holmes?"

He willed himself to be as detached and cool as she was seemingly finding it so easy to be. Everything he was feeling, all the things he had just done and said... it felt so alien to him, and he couldn't recognize this person sitting here in his skin. He didn't understand him, and could not read or reason with him. He was a stranger, and one that he was beginning to hate more and more with each passing second.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at The Woman.

She was shaking, only slightly, and fiddling nervously with the ring on her right hand. Her chest was rising and falling in odd intervals, as though she was consciously aware of it and trying to meter its cadence. She looked aloof, yes, but there was something all together too sharp in her eyes for her expression to pass completely for aloofness.

All this, of course, led to the conclusion that she was faking. She was good at that... but then again, he supposed, so was he.

"I think it's safe to say that now is a good time to put an end to our association," He answered her, hardening his face. "Don't you?"

He stood at that, not risking a look at her expression. Truth be told, he didn't think he could take it just then.

He walked around the bed to the foot and collected his pants and trousers, and began redressing casually, as though nothing had happened. He was forcing himself to focus on what he knew, what was real, what was absolutely tangible, and... What was that, exactly?

_Focus._ He reprimanded himself.

"John will be in soon, so I imagine you'd like to be gone before then." He heard the words come out of his mouth as he, his pants already on, put one leg of his trousers on, and then the other. "I don't expect the conversation I'd have to have with him should he find you here would be mature or stimulating, so I'd rather save myself at least from that tonight." He went on, pulling his zip up and clasping his button, walking immediately toward his dresser where his shirt and jacket still lay discarded on the floor.

For her part, Irene remained completely silent, though Sherlock still refused to chance a look at her.

He picked up his shirt and pulled it on over his shoulders, ignoring the shaking in his hands as he began to work the buttons closed starting from the top... All the while hoping that she would move, or speak. Once his shirt was completely buttoned, he tucked it in and stared down at his jacket, contemplating whether or not he should put it back on... but knowing it didn't matter. He ran his hands down his mouth, and turned to look at the tipped over frame on his dresser, because he didn't know what else to do. He stared at it for a long few moments, remembering suddenly that Irene had been quite hell bent on getting a reason for its being here out of him.

"You want to know why I keep this in here," he began, righting the photo yet again. "Because you think it'll offer some insight in to my mind," He paused. "But you're wrong. I don't think or reason the way you do, so you can't hope to base your theories as to what I am or the motivations behind what I do on your own standard." He kept his eyes on the young faces of he and his brother for a moment longer before finally turning to look at Irene.

Sherlock's stomach sank at the unconcealed hurt that lay across her face, but he didn't have a choice in how to move forward.

"It's not for love that my brother has earned a frame in my bedroom," He continued even though he could feel the bits of his heart cracking away with each word. "And it's not for love that you've managed to fill a space in my bed."

She winced, and Sherlock felt shame... Deep and unadulterated, it was something he'd never quite felt before, and if he had to resist the urge to let out a sob then and there.

The Woman opened her mouth as though to speak, and then closed it again to swallow as tears brimmed her eyes. Sherlock forced himself to keep his eyes on her - forced himself to stay rigid and unreadable. He had some experience with repressing his emotions and even his desires, so he was able to maintain the veneer, but this was the first time he'd ever hated himself for it.

"In my profession, there are endless opportunities to feel debased or degraded." Irene started, and her voice was bordering on hoarse as she pulled her legs up to her chest in a way that looked positively defensive. "But I've always managed to be above it... Beyond it. I've never felt in contempt of myself... until now." A beat. "Until you."

"I..." Again he was speechless, and he wholly resented being so. "Forgive me." He repeated his plea from earlier, though he wasn't entirely sure which part of this he was asking her to forgive him for. Was it for the callous behavior after having so fully and willingly given himself to her? Was it because it burned him to the core to know that because of him she felt that she had disrespected herself in some way?

Or was he simply asking her to forgive him for guessing that she loved him?

"No." She caressed the word on her tongue as it came out of her mouth.

Sherlock put his hands exasperatedly over his hips, turning his head to look toward the bedroom window that over looked Mrs. Hudson's garden. How had he got here? How had things become so fantastically misshapen? He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

"What do you want from me?" He asked, and then looked back at Irene. She appeared almost as lost as he felt.

"I want you to admit that you love me."

For a moment, Sherlock seemed to have forgotten how to breathe as sirens went off, red flags went up, and walls began to quickly build themselves around him brick by brick. Love? She wanted him to admit- what? No. Absolutely, utterly, emphatically, _no_.

Sherlock hadn't noticed that he had been stepping backward until his back hit the wood of his dresser drawers. He stared open mouthed at The Woman as though she had just ripped his heart out through his mouth and was now asking him to swallow it again. It was one thing for him to come to the realization himself when he was in the throws of grief and ecstasy, but to say the actual words aloud? There was no way. He couldn't trust her with it. He couldn't trust himself in a world where he had told Irene Adler that he loved her... It was his last barrier. His last stronghold. He'd be lost - lost completely and forever if he told her. He wouldn't. Not now, not ever.

"Admit it." She repeated, almost on a whisper... though it was oddly evident that she didn't actually believe that he _did_ love her, which made him feel even more wretched. He couldn't tell her, he just bloody _couldn't_, but a part of him _did_ want her to know. He didn't want to hurt her.

God, he _didn't want_ to hurt her.

Sherlock pressed his lips together, trying to collect himself.

"Admit what?" He spat, holding back his own damnable tears. "There's nothing to admit."

He was scared now. Really and truly scared, and he could feel the cold grip of panic begin to rise up and strangle him. His throat threatened to close up on him completely.

Irene stared at him, her eyes bright with pain and tears, her lips parted slightly in an expression of disbelief.

"You really are a-"

"Yes, I really am." He interrupted her curtly, not knowing exactly what she was going to accuse him of being, but knowing it was going to be unflattering... and also, most likely, true.

The Woman threw her legs over the side of the bed almost gracefully, opposite of where Sherlock stood. He kept his gaze rooted to the far wall, avoiding lingering on her nude form for any length of time. She went quickly to the floor at the foot of the bed. He could see her in his peripheral vision shuffling rapidly through fabric, putting her undergarments and dress back on. The sense of breathtaking loss he felt as she did so had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she was no longer going to be naked in front of him.

"Well, Mr. Holmes." Irene started, her voice as crisp and cold as ice. He moved only his eyes to look at her as she began crossing to the door. "You've well and truly won." She paused, as she reached for the knob. "Thank you."

"What?" He asked tonelessly.

She looked at him, and Sherlock forgot how to make his heart beat.

"For the final proof."

He wanted to die.

"Don't." He responded as she pulled the door open just barely. She stilled, confusion in her eyes as she looked back at him.

"What?" She asked, her hand slipping away from the doorknob.

He was moving toward her before he understood what was happening, which seemed to be the trend of the night thus far. She watched him until he was so near her that she had to look up to keep eye contact.

"I said don't." He answered, reaching past her wrist to the door. Gently pushing it closed, he leaned in to the Woman as he had done earlier that night in a much different circumstance and for a much different reason. "Please."

Her head came to rest softly against his chest, as though she were exhausted... And it occurred to him that she probably was.

"Forgive me." He repeated, this time in a low and quiet voice in to her hair, pressing his hand firmly against the small of her back. He closed his eyes to take in her scent more thoroughly, though it was almost against his will. She gripped his arm, and his chest ached.

"I can't stay here."

He held her tighter at that. It was true, and he couldn't deny it. Not aloud or to himself.

"How am I meant to let you go?" He didn't know how that was supposed to come out, but the way it _did _come out was as a plea. She let go of his arm.

"Like this." She said, twisting around and opening the door once again.

Quickly he took her by the wrist and turned her round to face him again, pushing her against the door, which resulted in it slamming shut behind her. His hands were braced at either side of her shoulders, and his torso was pressed so closely against hers that he could feel her breathe.

He wanted her again, badly... But though he somehow admittedly craved again the release her body had offered to him minutes before, it wasn't what he really wanted. He wanted more from her than physical intimacy. He wanted more than he could possibly ask for.

He wanted her to stay.

He had never realized before how absolute rubbish his resolve was... but then, it had previously never had occasion to be tested like this.

He leaned in slowly, his gaze moving from The Woman's eyes to her mouth once and then twice, and then sliding shut as his lips found hers. His whole body cried out in elation at the contact as though it had been waiting for this his entire life. He could hear the tune he'd composed for her in his head, note by note, and each carrying a wave of adoration that he let out in his kiss. Her lips parted and as her tongue slid gently against his he let out an agonized groan.

What the _hell_ was he doing?

He didn't know. His whole life had been composed of hard facts and cold logic. He always knew his next step before he took it. He could read situations the way others read headlines in newspapers. The world just made sense to him. He could see it for what it was, how it moved, how it breathed. Even when things surprised him, they didn't really surprise him. The world and the people who lived in it adhered to patterns and rituals, and Sherlock had learned how to recognize these things years ago. Nothing ever shocked him or threw him, and so he always knew what to do when the time came to know.

Now, though? He couldn't see forward to the next moment let alone how he was going to force himself through the situation.

She pulled away, and Sherlock took the break in contact to try to reign in his breathing.

"What do you want from me?" Irene posed Sherlock's question back at him. He stared down at her wet blue eyes absolutely not knowing the answer.

"Once you walk out of this flat, I will never see you again." He responded with a truth that had been pressing on his heart through out almost this whole encounter.

Irene pressed her mouth together in obvious frustration and pushed Sherlock away from her and took long steps toward his wardrobe before turning around to face him again.

"What do you want from me, Sherlock?"

What did he want? What did he _want_? He wanted for her never to have come here. He wanted for her never to have known his name. He wanted for her to not have dug her manicured nails so deeply and irrevocably through his heart. He hated her, he hated what she'd done, and he hated that she was in danger.

He hated that he loved her.

"You!" he growled, the last consonant barely out of her mouth.

She shook her head lightly, a tear finally escaping her eyes.

"You _have_ me." She repeated what she had told him earlier, though this time she said it in a heartbreakingly entreating manner.

"No, I don't." He responded angrily. Didn't she understand what she had done? "You're in danger. You can't stay with me. You can't stay here. You took your life in to your hands with that fantastically reckless power play, and now I _can't_ have you."

"Then let me go." She said, and another tear fell.

"I can't do that either!" He yelled, and The Woman started. His anger dissipated a bit at that, though he was no less frustrated... And as he stared at her, her cheeks red, her eyes wide with hurt, her whole life in ruins, he understood finally what he had been asking her to forgive him for. His tense stance slackened. "I'm sorry that you love me."

Her face changed completely at that, and she suddenly looked for all the world like he had just slapped her.

"I'm not quite convinced you know what love is."

Sherlock raised his head at that, a bitter smirk at the side of his mouth.

"I understand anything that can be dissected."

The Woman's lips turned down as though she were impressed.

"Brilliant, professor." She responded mockingly.

Sherlock bit down.

"I've spent years carefully avoiding sentimentality where I'm able and never encouraging it in others. However, as it turns out, sometimes I am _un_able and others have been nonetheless encouraged. Don't assume that because I'm not dropping to one knee that I don't know what love is."

The Woman was silent, her expression shocked, and Sherlock immediately realized his mistake.

_The car backfires, and the hiker turns to look... Which was his big mistake._

It was going to take a fair amount of mental fortitude to convince her that what he had just said was not an accidental admission of his love for her, and he wasn't even sure that it was worth doing. He wasn't sure that he had it in him.

"Irene, I-"

He was cut off, being pressed roughly against his door, his mouth captured in a fervent kiss, whatever words he was about to speak completely forgotten. He wrapped his arms around The Woman and poured all the love he would never be able to give her in to his caresses as he held on to her for what felt to him like dear life. He wanted this kiss, needed it, his heart and soul begged for it... He knew that whatever happened tonight, no matter what he or she said, no matter what they did, that tomorrow she would be gone. He couldn't bear it, couldn't abide it, but it was nonetheless his reality.

She said he had her, and tonight, the fabled "very last night" that she had spoken of earlier when he couldn't possibly have understood, was the only night where it would be true. The only woman he had ever loved had walked in to his bedroom on the same night that she was to walk out of his life.

Sherlock's hand came up to firmly grasp a handful of her hair as his other hand felt the fabric of her dress. He pulled away from the fire of her kiss and stared intensely in to her eyes.

"Take. This. _Off_."

She smiled in a way that Sherlock could only have described to himself as wicked, and though he might have admonished himself for the thought in any other circumstance, this time he just didn't care.

"Yes, Mr. Holmes."

**...  
>TBC<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>End Notes<strong>: The line "I'd do anything to make you stay" in Irene's second email is actually a lyric I took from Florence and the Machine's song "No Light, No Light" which has been playing on repeat in my house ever since I started writing this story. It's supplied not just a little inspiration for me, so I hope you'll give it a listen if you haven't already heard it!

Fair warning: next chapter will have some mature bits!


	5. Good God

**Chapter 5: Good God**

**...**

**3 years Later**

Sherlock stared up at the ceiling of his room, light from the moon outside cascading in through his curtains. He couldn't sleep, but it didn't really bother him. He hadn't eaten in over 24 hours, though that didn't really bother him either. He hardly noticed these things at all.

A head against his shoulder and an arm across his chest accompanied by a soft inarticulate mumble pulled him out of his thoughts. He took a deep breath as his eyes slid shut.

_All for a case..._

"Sherl..." The soft voice whispered tiredly. Sherlock didn't respond. "I know you're awake."

He opened his eyes.

"I'm sorry." He responded. "I didn't want to bother you."

Janine's arm tightened around him as she nuzzled against his neck. She'd insisted on staying without insisting, something that she was quite good at. He wondered if all women were good at it.

"Can't sleep?" She asked, placing a kiss against where her mouth lay pressed against his pulse point. He resisted the urge to flinch; as such a show of disinterest wouldn't really do in this matter. It was not that she wasn't beautiful, as he could objectively see her aesthetic appeal, and it wasn't even that he was averse to intimate physical contact (though... he supposed he was - mostly), but it was that this was his space above all else. He believed he had the same line of thought years before when The Woman had intruded uninvited. This was where he came to be alone, and to be safe. He couldn't be either of those things with a woman in his bed.

Well, that wasn't completely true... but what did that matter? Janine wasn't the exception. And The Exception was gone.

"I was just thinking." Sherlock responded, falling in to his role with ease.

"Mm?" She asked, pressing her body closer to his. "What about?"

He twisted in place so that he faced her, breaking her contact from his neck and body, though her arm still lay across him.

"You're the only one who knows what I'm really like." He said, smiling at her. It was easy to give someone what they wanted once one knew what they wanted was. In this case, Janine had clearly been looking for someone to go home with, but more than that, she was looking for something long term. That had been clear at the wedding when she hadn't pursued Sherlock even though she had obvious interest in him. She hadn't been "in the market" for idle flirtation or even for a one off tryst, as evidenced by her first comment to him in the courtyard:

_But no sex, okay?_

She'd been looking for a boyfriend, and since Sherlock had quickly figured out who she was and whom she worked for, it was easy to plant the seed of infatuation that first night. He'd sealed the deal, as it were, with the fanciful pirouette in the hall of the wedding venue. After that, he knew that she would be ready and willing when his phone call came.

She placed a soft kiss against his lips that he widened his smile in to, while simultaneously feeling as though he were committing a gross act of injustice against her.

"I believe you." She responded lowly, her hand trailing over his hip. Sherlock knew that tone and touch well.

"You should sleep." He started, pulling away from her proximity a bit. "Early day tomorrow."

Janine slumped against her pillow perceptibly. She had been trying to seduce Sherlock for the better part of 3 weeks now, but there were several reasons that he could never let his ruse escalate to that level. Firstly, and probably most importantly, he wasn't _actually_ that big of an arsehole. Well, perhaps he _could_ be if the situation really necessitated it, but so far it had not. Hopefully it _would_ not. Secondly, that kind of act would require a fair bit of brainpower, for reasons best left undisclosed even if they were only to himself, and he couldn't risk it. Not now. There was too much work to be done, and too many variables to keep track of. He simply couldn't afford it.

And then, of course, there was the third reason.

"Not that early." She said, and he could hear the distinct edge of disappointment in her voice.

"I didn't just mean you. I have promises to keep."

"And miles to go before you sleep? You can't ply me with poetry forever, Sherlock Holmes." She responded sleepily, her amiable mood having quickly returned.

"Ply you? No. Forever?..." He smiled, and she smiled back...

And his heart actually ached.

Partly, he felt sorry for Janine. She wasn't so bad, really. She was beautiful, and even clever in her own way. She deserved a good man with good intentions, someone who really loved her the way that she was ready to love him.

Of course, that was only partly... and a small part at that.

He'd had only two nights with The Woman. One in which he was wholly unprepared for, and the other, which had been necessarily abbreviated, that had been quite painful and heart wrenching as feelings had already been established, and there wasn't enough time to...

_To what?_ His mind asked mockingly.

He didn't want to think about this. He'd thought of Irene very little since he saved her life in Karachi, and had managed, almost, to not think of her at all since he'd sworn off reading her emails. He hadn't even logged in to that account since that day... But during these nights, with the wrong woman at his side, it was difficult, bordering on impossible, to keep his thoughts from turning to The Right Woman. She'd lain in this very bed with him, entwined with him, caressing his skin and smoothing her hand over his hair. Whispering things that he could not recall now for fear of audibly sighing at the memory.

He missed her, something he begrudgingly admitted to himself as he still could not reconcile feeling that emotion with the man he knew, or thought, that he was, but she was out of his life, and the memory of her lips against his was fading from his mind just as the scent of her perfume had faded from his sheets long ago. He had a long memory, a _complex _memory, but even he could not keep her caresses tangible forever.

He couldn't have sex with Janine, or indeed with any woman, because he knew what it was like with someone he genuinely cared for and admired (was it love? He didn't know anymore, and wanted to doubt that it had been now)... and he didn't think his heart could stand the parody.

Frustrated with the thought, Sherlock clenched his fists. It didn't matter. None of this mattered. Abstinence was easy, so there was no point in remembering the two times in his whole life where it hadn't been. It was distracting and destructive, and completely uncharacteristic. It was best to pretend that part of him had never existed, because for all intents and purposes it didn't _now_, and it never would again.

But it wasn't physical intimacy that was the problem, anyway. Not really. He had come to care for so few people in his life, that it felt like having one of them likely permanently removed from him was... unfair.

"Sherl...?"

"Mm?"

"Your heart's racing..."

Sherlock sat up suddenly.

"What are you-"

"I'm just going for a drink of water." He interrupted her as he threw the blanket off of him and stepped out of bed.

"Sherlock, are you-"

Sherlock leaned down and kissed Janine chastely on the forehead before caressing her cheek for a moment.

"I'm fine, darling." He said, trying the word out and then deciding never to use it again. "Get some rest. I'll be back in a moment."

He walked around the bed to where his blue dressing gown hung in his wardrobe and flung it over his bare body before opening his bedroom door and shutting it behind him once he was in the corridor.

He pressed the home button on his mobile, and the screen lit to life. Of course he'd grabbed it quickly as he passed his dresser... Because it had occurred to him, quite suddenly, that the last correspondence he had received from the woman had been after his faked suicide. It was possible, likely, that she had written to him since then.

Shaking as he walked toward the parlor, he accessed the proxy server he'd set up years ago, and began typing in the URL to his secure email. He paused a moment at the password prompt and wondered if this were not an incredibly bad idea, but then decided he didn't particularly care. He typed in his password, his body beginning to tremor slightly at the cold and the... fear? Dread? Anticipation?

Then the screen loaded.

Sherlock's heart all but stopped, and his breath caught completely in his chest.

He had two unread emails.

_..._

_All for a case..._

What was? _This_ was? What _was_... this?

Sherlock lay back on the dirty mattress against the wall of the house that was once probably very beautiful, but was now just a shell of its former self. His mind could not manage, for the moment, even the most rudimentary of processes or deductions of which he was usually able as the rush of euphoria, from the needle still jabbed in his arm, enveloped and overwhelmed his senses.

The Woman lay in a blur at his side.

"What are you doing here?" He asked, turning his head toward her. She didn't answer. She never really did. "I'm working."

Was that disappointment flickering like a candle over her face? No, because there was no face. There was no candle. There was no woman.

Sherlock closed his eyes and breathed deeply, knowing, but not completely understanding, that he was crossing a line here that he probably shouldn't have been crossing. Not even for... whatever reason he had for doing it, but that was currently escaping him. He knew John would be disappointed. Molly would be disappointed. Mary might even be disappointed, but would The Woman? No. She'd never know about this, would she?

"Who cares?" He thought, but more likely said aloud. "I don't care. I don't care about anything."

_But we both know that's not quite true..._

"Shut up." Sherlock spat at his dead nemesis. "I won, didn't I?"

No answer. Moriarty never really answered.

Sherlock pulled the needle from his arm, and tossed it toward the floor. Turning over on to his side, he forsook thought and decided that sleep would be a more comfortable state to spend the rest of his stupor in. This would be the last night he did this, he promised himself. No more of this. Not even for a case...

Not even to forget...

But then... he heard the sound of his friend's voice, speaking to someone that wasn't him. Judging by the enhanced clarity of his thoughts, he had actually been asleep for some time, though he was still very decidedly high.

Of course it wasn't really John. He hadn't seen or heard from John since the wedding. What would he be doing here, in a drug den?

Sherlock turned over to be confronted with the back of his friend, and figured it was just another hallucination conjured up from his drug addled brain and he figured... what was the harm in indulging it?

"Oh, hello, John." He said, pulling his hood down. "Didn't expect to see you here." The look of complete surprise on Fake John's face was quite convincing as he slowly turned to Sherlock. "Have you come for me, too?"

* * *

><p><strong>3 years earlier<strong>

Irene's eyes remained intently on Sherlock's as her arms went up to the top of the zip at the back of her dress. Sherlock caught her suddenly by the wrists, and slowly pulled them back down to her side.

"Not that." He said. He let her wrists go, and taking her chin his hand, turned her face toward the light. "_This_."

The Woman searched his eyes, but he said nothing more.

She reached up and encircled his wrist in her fingers.

"Why?" She asked.

Why? There were so many "whys" tonight, that he didn't think he'd ever be able to sort through them all... So many "whys" that didn't have answers, or that couldn't have answers, or that he didn't _want_ to answer. But this? This was simple.

He searched for the right words. She didn't need it, that was certain. In truth she looked better without it. Her features were too angular and aristocratic for the deep and contrasting colors. The makeup aged her, and was harsh against her pale skin. Earlier in the day when she had been here willfully putting the whole of the western world in jeopardy, she had appeared far softer and far more attractive - something he'd noted with detachment at the time.

But that didn't matter. If physical appearance was what drew him to people, he could find a pretty girl anywhere... And anyway, Irene would have been intriguing even if he were blind.

"You don't need to wear a mask." He finished finally.

_With me_, his mind added, though he assumed it had been implied.

"I..." She seemed quite taken aback. She clearly had taken his earlier demand as sexual, but appeared at a loss to be confronted with this instead. Her world had been all about using her sexuality and cunning to get what she wanted from people, and from life, and so she must have been very comfortable in that realm. Yet, he thought, it couldn't have been the whole story, as much as she was probably loath to accept that there was a different part of her... much as the same as Sherlock was.

"It's water based." He said as he moved his hand from her chin and ran a finger down the streaks on her face, more to illustrate his point than to caress her. "You've chosen products that are easy to remove. If you'd wanted it to last, if this was the true face you'd chosen for yourself... you'd have used something that wouldn't just wash away with water." He paused. "Or tears."

She seemed to stiffen a bit at that.

"I rarely cry."

"Does that make me special?" He asked her, calling back to the day he discovered that she was still alive at the Battersea power complex when she had asked that of John. He knew it might be bit cruel to bring it up now, but he couldn't resist the parallel.

"No." She answered plainly and probably, he thought, defensively.

Sherlock smiled darkly, either because he believed her, or because he didn't, but he wasn't sure which. He didn't _want_ to know which, either. Without taking his eyes off of her, he opened the door to his right. Irene stared up at him, clearly uncomfortable at having no semblance of an upper hand, and seemingly unwilling to do what he was asking her. There was probably some symbolism at work here, but there was far too much to think about as it was, and so he ignored the idea.

"You think I'm just going to-"

"Yes." He interrupted her with the curt answer for the second time in the night.

"I have to leave now." She responded quietly, still maintaining eye contact.

The same pain from earlier erupted subtly beneath Sherlock's ribcage, and he realized wearily that she was, of course, correct...

He took a step back from her as he raised his chin, and then stepped away from her entirely.

"Willing to take off your clothes, but not your makeup." He paused, and then with something of a sneer: "Interesting."

She took a step toward him, clear anger on her face.

"And you?" She asked, gesturing toward the bed. Sherlock didn't look. "Willing to sleep with me, but not willing to admit any emotional attachment."

"And is that what you think I feel toward you?" He asked. "Emotional _attachment_." The last word came out as though he meant it as an insult toward her, and he understood that it was partly because he had. Attachment. Sentiment. _Love_. All of these words were horribly misrepresentative of what it was that he felt, and what she was to him; what she had been becoming for the last few months. Boiling it all down to a single thing was disgustingly reductive, and the whole thing was beginning to offend him.

She looked hurt, and he couldn't make himself care for the moment. He was hurting, too, and there was little sense in feeling it by himself.

"Why did you ask me to stay?"

"Because you're going out there to die, and I can't protect you." He said bluntly.

She laughed softly.

"Sherlock." She said almost on an exhale. "You never could."

She had meant that to sting, and it did. She was right. He had been in the dark too much of the time to really know what he had been up against, and that wounded a part of him that was typically too indelible for others to touch. She'd made him a pawn in a bigger game, one that she'd made certain he was too distracted to see... and even as she lay in ruins at his feet, he had to accept the truth of the matter.

She had beaten him.

"You could have brought your case to _me_." He hissed, hurt permeating through his pride and heart, the insinuation clear that she never had to involve Moriarty in the first place.

She scoffed.

"Right." She said, nodding. "The consulting detective... Tell me," She looked him up. "If you can stop Moriarty, why haven't you already done it?"

He opened his mouth only to find that he had no words, and then pressed his lips together.

"You _must_ see." She said in a bemused tone, tilting her head. "_He_ holds the cards. He finds _us_... Not the other way round."

This was bad, and it was only getting worse. Nothing made sense in his world, and Sherlock was beginning to feel like a caged animal with no recourse but to lash out.

"Why did you come here?" He growled.

And then something occurred to him.

Suddenly Sherlock was in a bedroom in a sunny flat in Belgravia, the deep wood of the floor reflecting some of the light from behind the gossamer drapes. He turned to the door beside the bed where Irene Adler, clothed only in his coat, stood staring. There was a look in her eyes reminiscent of a feral cat as he slowly walked toward her.

"Why did you come?" He asked, walking around her. As he moved, she began walking toward her vanity. He remembered this was when he had turned away from her, when he'd given her a chance to grab the needle from wherever she had been stowing it. He'd turned away only for a moment, had underestimated her, and she had done what she had to do to regain control.

Irene turned to Sherlock with the needle in hand.

"You touched my arm." He said quietly, his eyes squinted as he began to piece it all together. "To distract me."

She was in front of him now, and jabbing the needle through the fabric of his shirt and in to his flesh.

Then the haze cleared, and Sherlock was once again looking at the real Irene Adler who stood in front of him in his bedroom - her eyebrows knit together in a frown as she spoke."

"-ening to m-"

"Where's your coat?" Sherlock asked, interrupting whatever The Woman was saying.

She looked startled.

"My coat?"

"Yes, your coat." He responded in a harsh tone for having to repeat it. "It was cold outside. Raining. You'd have a matching posh coat to go with that dress, and you would have worn it on a night like tonight." He paused, looking around. "But where is it?"

"This is absurd."

"Indulge me."

Irene swallowed visibly, her gaze wavering.

"Underneath the bed." She responded.

Sherlock raised his head, his hands going behind his back.

"With your shoes, I imagine."

The Woman said nothing.

"You took your shoes off downstairs, after all you couldn't have known if I would have beaten you here. If you were trying to sneak up on me, your heels on the wooden steps would have given you away. You made it to my bedroom and were satisfied that I was still out, so you hid the shoes and your coat, with your drugged needle concealed inside, underneath the bed and waited."

She met his eyes full on, defiance replacing anxiety or fear.

"Clever." She said shortly.

Sherlock's lips pulled slightly back in a morbid version of a smile.

"It's why you won't take your makeup off and why you wanted me to tell you I love you. You're not here for sentimentality's sake. You're here to finish your game. Tell me... after you'd drugged me again, just what exactly was the next step in your plan?"

"What if I said I was going to kill you?"

"I wouldn't believe it."

"I've killed people before."

"In self defense." He countered. "After tonight, I would not have been a threat to you ever again." He shook his head. "No. And just now, you were prepared to leave with your belongings still hidden beneath my bed, prepared to let me eventually find them and come to my own conclusions."

"You always do."

She stared at him silently, and Sherlock could feel the cool veneer over his own expression beginning to crack. He had never felt heartbreak, or if he had he had not recognized it as such at the time... but this? Losing to The Woman, giving himself to her like a fool, admitting to himself what he felt for her, knowing he was going to lose her... Nothing compared to this. He couldn't trust her or her motives. He couldn't even trust that she wasn't still working with Moriarty. He had ignored what he knew about her even as he embraced it, and it had been a mistake now just as it had been all along.

She loved him, but love was as useless to her as it was to him, and it wouldn't stop her from hurting him if she could. This was the only kind of love that could ever exist between the two of them.

"So, yes." Sherlock said, biting down against a rather unpleasant onslaught of emotion. "You were in the middle of leaving. So sorry to have interrupted."

He didn't expect the tears that formed just at the brim of her eyes at that.

"I brought it for protection." She spoke as though she were relenting, as though she were giving something up.

"I'm not in the habit of hurting defenseless women."

And that, of course, like her earlier jab at him, was also meant to sting. He doubted she had ever felt like a defenseless woman before tonight.

She smiled ruefully, as though she'd deserved that.

"Not against you."

"Then why hide it?"

"You just proved the why." She paused, and Sherlock said nothing. "You want me to take my makeup off?" She nodded and then looked toward the door Sherlock had opened for her earlier before walking through it without another word. He listened as the rush of water began pouring against the sink basin.

He walked toward the bathroom entranceway, and stepped in just enough to see her bent over the sink with soap in her hands, about to press them against her face.

"Stop." He said. She looked over at him, hands halted. There was nothing more to say than what he was going to in the next moment. "I don't love you."

He couldn't love her. He couldn't allow it. He had always had a large degree of control of his feelings, and after tonight, after Irene was well and truly gone, he would go back to who he was before any of this happened. He couldn't give her more than what he already had, and what's more he couldn't trust her enough to give it even if he could. Even if she had brought her fun little needle of sleep for something other than to drug him in to oblivion, it only mattered that he had _suspected_ her of something worse. He would always suspect her, because she would always be capable of it.

But then, she said something he couldn't possibly have been prepared for.

"I know."

Sherlock's face softened, and the heavy look of suspicion died away from his eyes.

_I know..._

It was such a seemingly innocuous thing to say. A phrase said and heard thousands of times, in response to thousands of different things... And yet it had a different meaning this time.

She closed her eyes and was about to bring her soapy hands to her face when Sherlock, who had not noticed his own approach took her by the wrist for another of many times in the night and stopped her. She looked at him, the room silent but for the sound of the water as he brought her hands down to the stream and gently rinsed them clean. He took a hand towel from where it hanged on the wall and held it under the faucet for a few moments, before turning the water off completely. He had not idea what The Woman was doing or thinking as she watched him, as he couldn't bring himself to look at her right away... But when he did, the look of awe on her face was breathtaking.

He brought the towel to the skin at her temple and gently caressed it down her cheek.

"Water based." He nearly whispered, then looked her in the eyes for a moment, before placing a kiss at the warm wet temple he had just wiped clean. She watched him quietly, her chest raising and falling heavily. He ran the cloth down the other side of her face, and then placed a soft kiss there as well, and he could feel her close her eyes against it, and he took the opportunity to gently press the warm cloth to first one eyelid, and then the other... his lips trailing after.

At first, the feel of her mouth against his was surreal, as he had never expected to feel it again. He had lost count of how many times he'd kissed The Woman tonight, and couldn't recall the many different ways he had done it... but, even so, this was different. His heart began to pound furiously against his chest, and he could feel it in his throat. The sense of euphoria that accompanied it was almost enough to make him give up his name for the promise of more.

But there was no promise of more. This affair had already outlasted its own lifespan.

"Why?" She asked, breathless, as she pulled away from his kiss and pressed her forehead against his. He backed her in to the sink.

"I don't know." He responded truthfully, because he absolutely didn't, before pressing himself in to her, causing her to partially hold her weight up on the sink basin, steadying her with his hand held against the small of her back.

He didn't know why he felt the need to give in again after having sworn to himself he never would, but he did know now why God hadn't answered his pathetic prayer earlier in the night when he had wished for a pack of cigarettes in the rain. It wasn't because Sherlock didn't believe in him, but it was because he believed in something else entirely. Irene had got it right upon their first meeting... He believed in himself as his own higher power, but The Woman had shown up in his life and had torn everything apart from the bottom up, and he couldn't help but be in awe of her. He couldn't stop himself from loving the very thing that was going to rip him apart starting from the inside. The worst part was that he knew it was going to happen, knew it was _happening_, yet here he was prepared to worship at her alter once again...

And he just didn't give a damn.

There was no more questioning after that. No more fighting himself, or feeble attempts to reassert his nature or character. He didn't know what he was feeling, didn't know what was going to happen when the world started spinning again and Irene Adler walked out of this flat with his heart bleeding in her hands... but his sense of self preservation was in tatters and if Irene was doing this purposely, if she was planning on holding his head under water until he could no longer breathe, then he was going to let her.

He took her mouth with his lips and was rewarded with the silky caress of her tongue as he roughly hiked her skirt up around her thighs. She groaned against him and he threw the towel down to the floor at his feet, right next to his better judgment.

He could feel her hands working at his trouser button and immediately a rush of arousal made itself known in a wave of adrenaline and jolt of his heart. She had said she knew he didn't love her, and he couldn't tell her otherwise, it was the last impenetrable wall around his sense of self... but he would show her. He could do that. He could allow that.

He leaned back from her as his trousers and pants dropped to the floor, reaching behind him to the shower and with a quick few turns of his wrist, the sound of the water spray filled the room. He leaned back in to Irene, deepening the kiss that he had momentarily broken, hurriedly kicking the fabric at his feet away while she worked the buttons of his shirt unclasped one by one until frantically pushing it down and off of his arms. With one hand he nearly ripped The Woman's knickers down her exposed thighs, the other tangling in to the hair at the base of her head. The feel of the fabric of her dress against his bare skin added to his sense of... something. Something he couldn't define, but that he felt she would be able to describe thoroughly. He only knew that what he was feeling was lust and longing, and the deepest need he'd ever felt before.

"I could have come here to kill you." She panted in to the air as she reached down and pulled the lace the rest of the way off of her body, and he pressed open-mouthed kisses against the hollow of her neck.

"It can wait."

He jerked his hips forward suddenly and without warning, and Irene cried out in a sound of deep pleasure.

"Oh god." She sighed against his ear. He kissed a line up to hers and then shook his head.

"Not quite."

Just what exactly he was doing, and the precise amount of damage he was dealing to himself and his life, he was unsure of. He knew there would be repercussions that would likely ripple outward from this night, far and away through the weeks, and months, and years, and that he was inviting all of it upon his own head...

But The Woman was demanding a sacrifice, and Sherlock would be damned if she didn't get one.

* * *

><p><strong>3 Years Later<strong>

Sherlock sat in the darkness of his parlor, the hand holding his mobile limp at his side.

The first email had been short. Only one word this time. A question.

_How?  
><em>  
>How, she had wanted to know. How had he survived the fall? How was he still alive?<p>

The second email, sent 3 months after the first, was almost as short, but true to form... was much more painful to read. Even as he ruminated on the emotions that crashed against him unrelentingly in the cold and the dark, he knew that this was the end. He knew that what he and The Woman had spun in to motion that night in his bedroom what seemed a lifetime ago, was well and completely over. She had had changed everything for him that night, and she was doing it again now.

The last time he had looked at this inbox, he had told himself he never would again, because they were nothing but detrimental. He had wished that he had never met Irene Adler, and that was never truer than at this moment.

He stood slowly, and began the walk back to his bedroom where Janine awaited him, and as he put distance between him and his chair, he imagined memories melting off of him and landing in puddles on the floor behind him.

He opened his bedroom door, stepped in, and closed it. Dropping his dressing gown in a heap by the side of the bed along with his mobile, he slid underneath the blanket next to the woman who lay between the sheets.

For the first time, he pulled in tightly toward Janine and conformed himself to the outline of her body, her back pressed to his chest.

"Hold a girl like that, and she might think you love her." Janine said sleepily, and Sherlock's arms unconsciously tightened around her, and then he consciously made the decision to pull her round to face him. She smiled lazily up at him.

"She might just be right." He responded, leaning down and pressing his cold lips against hers. She responded immediately, wrapping her arms around his neck. He clenched his eyes closed as her tongue touched his, his heart hardening, and his resolve strengthening.

He had always known it was going to end, and as his lips moved against the lips of a woman whom he would never love, he realized it had ended long before this night... It had ended the night Irene sent her last email.

_Goodbye, Mr Holmes.  
><em>

**_..._**


	6. Transient

**Author's Note: **Hello! Happy 2015 - the year in which new Sherlock episodes will be released! Today, in honor of Sherlock Holmes' birthday, and in honor of Sherlock filming finally being underway (WOOOOO!), I offer my small token of appreciation to the fandom. :)

A few notes:

1) Part 6 sees a return to the plot line set up some chapters ago, for anyone who was wondering where the hell that was going. Just to be clear, I'm not just jumping around randomly to wherever the muse dictates. There's a center gravity here that everything is being pulled toward, and if I've carried it off at the end you should be able to see it. I hope. *crosses fingers*

2) This chapter is definitely M, but only about as M as any of the previous chapters have been.

3) And lastly, and perhaps most importantly… the timeline. I've read through timelines on the internet, and I've just now sat through a viewing of the whole of series 2, and I'm still somewhat at a loss. It seems to me that the writers of the show kind of play fast and loose with dates and the passing of time, so I'm going to keep what I've written for now. If a better timeline comes along, I'll switch it over to that. If you notice any glaring inconsistencies, please feel free to let me know!

Thank you again to all of my wonderful, lovely, immensely appreciated readers! I'm as nervous as ever to post this latest installment, but I hope you enjoy it!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 6: Transient<strong>

**...**

"I don't know how to play this game." Sherlock looked around the sunlit room, feeling dazed and uncertain... partly as to the game he was trying to play, and partly as to why he was in The Woman's sitting room. There were lots of reasons why he shouldn't have been here, he knew... though none of them in particular would come to him.

The Woman, clothed in his blue dressing gown, sat next to him on the settee with her legs tucked up underneath her. The sunlight bathed her in an odd, almost ethereal glow. Her hair hung in soft curls around her shoulders, and her face was clean and pale and beautiful.

She was nothing short of glorious to him.

"Surely you do." She responded to him with a smile. Sherlock looked over the table where the pieces of whatever game they were playing lay scattered, but none of it made sense to him. He didn't know how long they had been playing this, or even why. "You had a childhood, didn't you?"

He looked back at The Woman and stared for an infinite moment in to her smile before he had to look away as though averting his eyes from the sun. Something inside of him swelled and hurt, and he felt that if he paid it attention for too long that he would remember what was causing it... And he didn't want to remember. He didn't want to know why the sense of emptiness loomed heavy around him. The idea that he would ever have to confront it filled him with cold dread, and he felt that if he could just remember the rules to this game that he would never have to feel the loss that threatened to consume him whole.

Sherlock swallowed, and tried to focus on the words written on the different corners of the board, though they seemed almost to be gibberish.

"Debatable." He responded, and his throat felt tight.

"Oh, come now. Stop it." The Woman chided. "You grew up in a perfectly happy household. Where does the misanthropy come from?"

"Intelligence." Sherlock answered with another short answer, feeling horribly disoriented and quite unable to get any of his bearings.

"Sherlock..." The Woman said, and she suddenly sounded worried, or frightened. Sherlock's breath caught in his chest as he looked over at her, because he knew she was going to cause him pain. All she ever did was cause him pain. "You're playing the wrong game."

"What?" He asked urgently. "I don't understand." "Do you love me?"

Sherlock felt heavy and warm, but he knew the answer to this question. He'd known the answer to this question for an eternity, and he could tell her now. Nothing was stopping him.

"I-"

She pressed her finger to his mouth. "Shhh..." She said, and smiled a small smile as she moved her hand to caress his cheek. He leaned his face in to it and closed his eyes against it for just a moment. "I know you do."

"No you don't." He answered her sadly.

Her face changed at that, her eyes becoming far away and frightened.

"Find me." She asserted. Sherlock's hand came up to hold hers against his cheek. "Sherlock, you have to find me."

All at once he could feel his heart shattering in to pieces that would forever be too small to settle back in to place again. This was what he was forgetting, what he had lost. It was her. It was always her.

"I will." He said desperately, but she was already gone. "I swear to you."

**...**

"What?" John asked. Sherlock's eyes slowly slid open, and John Watson came in to view hovering above him. "John..." He started, and his tongue felt heavy in his mouth, and his heart felt like dead weight in his chest.

"Impressive, that." The Doctor said. "You were out after one punch. I thought it was going to take at least two."

Sherlock's face contracted in confusion, and he forcefully shoved the traumatic dream he had just awaken from to the back of his mind. He couldn't allow himself to wallow in the particular agony it had caused him just now for sanity's sake alone, and furthermore he knew there was something more pressing at the moment.

"What are you...?" He trailed off as the events of the day came back to him in full force. He dropped his head back against the Union Jack pillow that was behind him on the sofa with an exhale and a roll of his eyes. "I'm sure you would have watched patiently, however long it took."

John pursed his lips in a shrug and shook his head slightly.

"Well, I wouldn't have let him kill you. I'd have stopped him after 4 or 5."

With the lingering effects of his dream still holding on tightly to his chest, Sherlock nearly found himself wishing that John had just let the old man beat him to a pulp. Then maybe he'd have jostled some sense back in to his brain... because he had been on short supply of that for months now.

"Is it my fault that I'm right all the time?"

The anger that seeped out of his voice was directed more at himself than at his friend, but it didn't make a difference.

"No, I think that might be your parents' fault. What _is_ your fault is how you told those poor people about their daughter." "What does it matter how they found out?" Sherlock asked exasperatedly, his eyes opening once again as he sat up heavily.

"Dead is dead no matter how many bouquets of roses you throw at it."

John stared at him in awe.

"Maybe I _should_ have let him hit you again." Sherlock's hand went to his temple. "It feels like you did." A beat. "And what's Mycroft doing here?"

"How did you-"

Mycroft stepped in from the corridor with the red worded birthday card and John's sonic screwdriver in hand, looking put out and mock surprised. Sherlock was able to keep his face from showing any immediate reaction to seeing the card again, though he wasn't able to keep his pulse from speeding up. There were many reasons why he couldn't allow Mycroft to know where the card had come from, the least of which being that he wasn't quite willing to let him or John know the extent of his relationship with Irene Adler... the largest of which being that Mycroft couldn't be trusted not to use the information in a way that wouldn't be dangerous for her.

He wouldn't willingly put Irene in more danger. Not again.

"Thirty seconds." He said. "You're slipping."

There it was. Their favorite thing to say to one another.

"If you'll recall, I was just beaten unconscious." "Not for the first time." Mycroft responded with a smile, then it faded away as quickly as it had shown up. "Who sent the card, Sherlock?"

Sherlock stiffened his jaw defiantly.

"Didn't leave a name."

Mycroft laughed shortly.

"Who do you think I am?" He asked. "John?"

John looked slightly to the left for a moment as though to roll his eyes, but otherwise did not respond to the comment.

"Well, then why don't you tell me who sent it?" Sherlock asked, gesturing toward the card in his brother's hand.

"Oh, I have ways of figuring it out, of course... but I would rather save the British government the time and resources." Sherlock blinked.

"And what is that supposed to be? Incentive?"

"I just thought perhaps for once in your life you would like to be helpful rather than obstructive."

"Shall I introduce you two, then?" John asked sarcastically. Mycroft sighed.

"You've no doubt noticed the suspicious behaviors of several persons of interest, the string of murders-"

"There," Sherlock interrupted, pointing at his brother but looking at John. "Mycroft knows they're murders, too. Should we get the old man back in here to revisit his anger on his face now?"

"Does this have any connection to the Charing Cross woman?" Mycroft continued, raising his voice in irritation and holding the card out in front of him. Sherlock stood suddenly and grabbed it out of his brother's hand, staring him intently in the eyes.

"I don't know who sent it." He asserted once more, his jaw set. Mycroft held Sherlock's gaze silently for a moment.

"I trust that if you find yourself in the possession of information that pertains to the welfare of the country, that you will contact me immediately." The older brother articulated gravely, his face dour. "We wouldn't want a repeat of the Heathrow incident." He smiled, though it didn't reach the corners of his mouth let alone his eyes. "Would we?"

Sherlock raised his chin, but said nothing.

Mycroft kept his eyes on his brother for a second longer, and then turned to John.

"Here's your toy." He said, handing the doctor his sonic screwdriver.

"It's a pen." Sherlock responded for his friend who, for his part, took the device and discontentedly tossed it on to the table.

Mycroft all but rolled his eyes as he exited the room toward the steps. Sherlock unceremoniously slammed the door shut behind him.

"'A repeat of Heathrow.'" he intoned mockingly, then looked at John who had his arms crossed over his chest. "He's always so..." He stopped speaking as he noticed the expectant way that his friend was looking at him. "What?"

"You know what."

"No I don't, or else I wouldn't have asked 'what?'"

John unlocked his arms and gestured at the card in Sherlock's balled fist.

"Why did you lie?"

Sherlock thought briefly about unloading the whole thing on to his friend's shoulders, because maybe he could actually help... but as it stood, he didn't think that was the case. Telling him now would needlessly complicate the matter, and the whole situation was complicated as it was.

Sherlock, instead, said nothing.

"Listen, if you know something, you should tell Mycroft and be done with it."

Sherlock looked toward the door.

"I don't know anything yet." He said as he looked back to the doctor. John let out a short laugh.

"What about Irene Adler?"

Sherlock's gaze narrowed in startled reaction.

"What?"

"She was working with Moriarty. She might know something."

Sherlock shook his head as he pressed his mouth together in a firm line.

"Yes, and she's very likely dead." He announced definitively enough to where it caused his own heart to recoil from it. John tilted his head and waited for an explanation. "You think Mycroft let her go so that she could lead a carefree life of leisure? As soon as I broke her passcode, she became the most wanted criminal in Britain... There have been four murders now. If Jim Moriarty is the cause, then how much would you like to wager against her still being alive?"

John was silent and looked over Sherlock's face as though trying to read his expression.

"Do you really think she's dead?"

At that question, Sherlock realized something with a sickening and dropping feeling of his stomach. God knew what had gone on in the time since the card had been sent, and God knew what Moriarty was capable of doing.

_I'll make you in to shoes..._

Sherlock swallowed against the fear and panic that was beginning to pool around his consciousness. He couldn't let it affect him now.

"It doesn't matter." He said as he opened the door and started toward the steps.

"Where are you going?"

Sherlock looked up at John from two steps down. The truth was that it was possible everyone he cared for was in danger now. If Moriarty was sending messages, it wasn't long before he sent one to Sherlock. The first step was finding out if The Woman was safe. After that, whether she was alive or dead, he would have to forget about her... because soon would be the time where Moriarty would have to be stopped, and it was going to take the whole of his mental acuity and awareness. Sentiment, as always, was a disadvantage, and one that he now made the decision to bar himself against. Once and for all.

"To finish that conversation with my brother."

* * *

><p><strong>One Month Earlier<strong>

Sherlock had never been in love, had never even been close to being in love, but as The Woman tangled her hands through his hair, and as their bodies moved together in unison, he thought that if this was love... he had been smart to stay clear away from it in the past.

If someone had been studying Sherlock and his methods, his life and his interactions, one might have come away with the idea that he avoided interpersonal relationships as a way to protect himself from sorrow or rejection. While that would have been an interesting interpretation, it would also have been completely incorrect. He hadn't avoided love to protect himself... he hadn't had to _avoid_ it at all, because there had never been a useful application for it in his life. His mind, his work, and his skills - they made him a complete man, fulfilled in every way that mattered to him. Then John came along and then he mattered, too. Which made things harder. Mrs. Hudson. Lestrade. They all made things harder.

Each new person creating a hole deep enough in Sherlock's heart to crawl in to and cause trouble... And grief.

Caring _was_ grief. And now there was this. Now there was more. Too much to process or understand. If this was love, if this was what being in love felt like, he hated himself for letting it happen, and he hated Irene for being the anomaly that forced it out of him.

_Caring is not an advantage. Sherlock._

Sherlock let out a muffled groan in to The Woman's slick and weighted down hair as he pushed her against the wet shower wall, her nails digging in to his hips.

"You're going to regret me." Irene panted in to his ear as he moved against her, the steam from the hot water beginning to fill completely in around them.

And that caused its own kind of pain, too, because he already did regret her... and didn't.

He couldn't respond to that, he could hardly even think anymore. All he knew was that he wanted this, needed it, and that the hurt thrumming its way through his veins demanded that he had her now, completely and thoroughly.

"You said I have you." He rasped against her cheek. "Do I?"

The Woman pulled away far enough to lock her blue eyes sharply with his, and there was sadness in her gaze that made Sherlock's hands tighten on the flesh at her sides.

"Yes." She said simply.

Sherlock buried his head in her neck and clenched his eyes closed. He knew it was true, and that this was the only night that it would be. His chest burned, and very little of anything was making sense. How many hours ago was it that he had known who he was? It couldn't have been long, but the Sherlock Holmes in Mycroft's study who tore Irene Adler's life down bit by bit as he viciously dialed the letters of his own name in to her camera phone, was not the Sherlock Holmes who now held on to that same woman as though for dear life. Something had changed. Everything had changed.

He'd fallen in love.

No. That didn't follow. The change had occurred sometime between him stepping out of his brother's home, and him stepping in to his own bedroom. Whatever it had been, whatever it was, wasn't love... because he must have been in love with Irene long before this night.

And that thought, so effortlessly arrived at, Shocked Sherlock so much that his breath caught and his body went rigid for a moment.

"Don't." Irene whispered.

"No..." Sherlock responded quietly, allowing his body to relax in to hers. "Not now."

Not now, because this was it. He'd admitted completely to himself that he was in love, and instead of freeing him it had caged him. Sentenced him. He'd never be the same, even though he wanted desperately to be the same. It was fitting that he'd moved them to the shower, as there was a deep desire inside of him to wash these feelings, the disastrous events of the day - of the last few months, the pain, the _change_, away.

"Sherlock..." She intoned in a breathless shudder, and the whole of his body was suddenly tingling from the sound.

Even as he had to almost physically will his traitorous heart to keep beating in the face of its own distress, he pulled away and looked at The Woman.

Her makeup was completely washed away now, and her dark hair was matted to her scalp. He realized what he must have looked like to her at that moment... and it occurred to him that there was nothing between them now. No disguises, not ulterior motives, no pretenses, and no need to hurt the other.

And this was all they were ever going to have.

Sherlock ran his hand over her hair and her cheek, his breathing quick and labored.

"You're..." He shook his head, unable to find the word. He searched his mind for a moment, but every word that came before him seemed inane or cliché. Nothing captured what he wanted to say... So he gave up.

Irene smiled, and there were even less words to describe that.

He pushed against her suddenly, and her smile disappeared with the familiar erotic sound that had been Sherlock's text tone for months. He pushed against her again, and again the sound escaped her.

Then again and again, until the pace and stimulation were almost unbearable, until The Woman was crying out repeatedly in to his ear, until his heart threatened to finally give out.

It wasn't enough. He was already close to coming undone, and this _wasn't_ enough. He couldn't let this end. Once it ended, she was gone. She was _gone_.

"Oh, _God_..." Sherlock groaned, his forehead and hands pressing against the slick tile next to Irene's head, her hands tight around his waist. "I-"

It almost slipped out then. The admission he swore he would never give her, but he was able to catch it at the last moment. Not because he was afraid of letting her inside of his walls, but because he couldn't allow himself to do that to her.

Irene's fingers were pressing in to him almost painfully now, but he invited it. He invited every physical sensation that washed over him along with the rush of water than pounded against his shoulders and blotted out the outside world. It was just the two of them now. For once. Just this once. He fought to keep hold of this moment, tried to make it stretch out for a lifetime, but he could feel it slipping through his grasp.

Irene began to tremor against him, around him, and her cries died in to a deeply held breath that she couldn't seem to let go.

_Not yet_, something inside of him screamed, but it was too late. The moment was over. She was already gone, and he was going with her.

This time was different. Where the instance before this had been a rush of confusion and lust and release, this was something else entirely. He was allowing himself to love her now, to hold her, to be the kind of man who could have this in his life. For one dreadful and wonderful moment, he allowed himself to belong to her.

And then that moment was gone, too. The world came back now. The heat from the shower became stifling, the water too abrasive, the pounding in his chest overwhelming. He closed his eyes to it all and swallowed, trying to reign in his breathing.

"Don't go." he found himself saying before his mind had even caught back up. Irene reached over and twisted the shower knob, and the water stopped.

"Stop." He said, this time with more will behind it, trying to catch her gaze.

Irene said nothing as she pushed gently against him, her face a mask of cool resolve. He blocked her exit from the shower, shaking his head. He couldn't take that. Not after she had been so open to him just a second before. He knew this had to happen, he knew that she had to go, and that it had to be now, but it was too much to tolerate.

"Not yet."

Dear God, he was _begging_. He could hear the desperation in his own voice and was repelled by his weakness, but the words had already been said and he could now only stand in the wake of them. Irene placed a soft hand on his forearm, and met his eyes with hers that were completely empty now.

"Let me go."

Sherlock searched her eyes for any trace of the emotion that had been able to take his breath away, but she was concealing it all from him now. Whether it was meant to make it easier on him or herself, he didn't know... but he had to nearly laugh at the cruel irony of the situation.

His lips quirked up in to a sneer of their own volition.

"Of course, Ms Adler." He stepped out of her way, and she moved passed him and out of the shower.

Sherlock braced himself against the tile with both hands and closed his eyes tight as The Woman took a towel from the wall, and walked back in to his bedroom.

In one night he and The Woman had played out the entirety of a relationship, and now it was over.

Now he had to remember how to be Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

><p><strong>Six Months Later<strong>

"What do you need?"

What did he need? For the first time in his life he needed reassurance and comfort, but he couldn't ask for that. He was so alone and so... For God's sake, he was _helpless_. Almost everything had gone exactly according to plan, and yet here he was on the brink of breakdown because in the end it had been so easy to deconstruct his life...

It hadn't occurred to him until just this night what he and Mycroft had overlooked. This had never been only about destroying Sherlock's reputation. It had been about burning the heart out of him... Burning his name, his friends, and his life. He'd already gotten the first out of the way, and that meant his friends were next. The only bargaining chip Moriarty had_ left_ was Sherlock's life... And Sherlock now knew that he would die to protect the people he cared about. Sherlock knew, and so did Moriarty. He would die shamed and isolated, burned to death. That's what the endgame had always been.

"You." Sherlock's voice cracked as he spoke the word that meant so much more than its one syllable could convey to Molly... His true, loyal, unyielding friend Molly. Molly whom he'd hurt, Molly whom he had used, manipulated, and belittled. He didn't deserve her friendship or her help. He didn't even understand why she would want to help him, especially if he wasn't what they both believed him to be. And how could she know now if he was or not?

"Tell me what to do." Molly responded resolutely, her eyes glossed over but not quite brimming with tears.

She would never know what she meant to him in this moment. She would never ever know quite how she was saving him... And he loved her. Simply and honestly, without angst or regret other than the hurt he'd repeatedly caused her. He loved her the same way that he now understood he loved John and Mrs Hudson.

He would die for Molly, too, if he had to.

These people were his family, and if this plan didn't work... He would do everything he could to see to their safety.

"I'm asking you to break the law."

"I've broken the law for you before."

Sherlock smiled a small genuine smile for a moment, before gravity took back over.

"There's a body with my face somewhere in England," He started. "Can you track it down for me?"

"How much time do I have?"

"None."

She was silent for a moment.

"Yes, I can track it down."

"And you'll need to falsify records." He paused. "You'll need to declare me dead."

Molly took a sharp intake of breath at that, but nodded.

"Who needs to believe it?"

Sherlock swallowed.

"Everyone."

"Is John-"

"Molly." He interrupted her, looking her in the eyes and hoping that he would not have to voice the sadness that was in them. "Everyone."

"He'll be... Difficult."

Sherlock shook his head.

"I'll convince him."

Molly nodded again, pressing her lips together as a new wave of tears appeared in her eyes.

"You're going to hear some awful things about me." He continued. "Worse than what's already come out."

"I don't care."

"Don't contradict any of it."

She looked startled at that, almost angry.

"What? I-"

"The truth will come out in the end. It always does... But Jim Moriarty has spider webs spinning out in all directions, and the spiders need to believe I've been..."

He stopped at that, and decided to drop that particular point. He was sure she understood, and what's more that the idea was painful to both of them.

"You need to be thorough and convincing." He went on instead. "Can I count on you?"

"Yes." She answered without hesitation.

Of course he could.

Sherlock nodded once, and then made a move to turn around. There was so much to be done, and a very important phone call to be made to Mycroft. This was the last night, he knew. The last night before what, he wasn't certain, but it was an altogether unnerving thought.

"Sherlock..." Molly said suddenly. He turned back to face her completely. She looked nervous and unhappy, even more so than she had a moment before. "Before you- before _we_... I just..." She paused and took a breath, seemingly trying to get her words straight. Sherlock tilted his head and waited patiently for whatever words were about to come.

"You asked me if I would help you... even if you weren't what I thought you were." She spoke clearly. Sherlock furrowed his forehead. "You have to know, before whatever happens _happens_... that I don't see you as Sherlock Holmes, the famous Consulting Detective. I see... more."

"More?" He couldn't help himself asking.

"There's more to you than... than the cases and the headlines. So whatever they're saying, for whatever it's worth, it wouldn't change what _I_ see."

Sherlock creased his forehead slightly.

"And what do you see?"

Molly seemed hesitant to answer, but in the next moment she answered anyway. "A good man."

Sherlock wished, suddenly and painfully, that he could be in love with Molly Hooper. She was the kind of woman whose love could make a man's life mean something, even a man like him who couldn't hope to earn it... But good or not, he wasn't _that_ type of man. Molly would move on one day and have the home and family she deserved if she wanted it. He would never want those things, and The Woman who _was_ unfortunate enough to have found herself in the possession of his heart would likely never know any kind of peace from it.

Which was another in his seemingly endless row of crosses to bear now.

Sherlock stepped in close to Molly, looking down at her intently.

"Thank you, Molly Hooper." He said, before leaning down and placing a tender kiss on her lips.

"You don't have to..." She started almost immediately as his lips moved away from hers. "I don't need you to..."

Sherlock took a large step back, and stood to his full height.

"Now then." he said, saving her from whatever turmoil she was about to launch herself in to. "Shall we begin?" Molly nodded quickly and moved past him back in to the room.

The detective took a deep breath, and then let it out. There was no more time to be sentimental. It was time to get to work.

**...**

Sherlock stared down at his phone as he sat on the lab floor, his back against the cabinets.

He had drafted several versions of an email to The Woman. A few of them had been explanations as to what was really going on. A few of them had been explanations as to why he was about to die. One of them, just one, had been to tell her that he always missed her, and never more than now when the probability that he would never see her again was higher and heavier than it had ever been before. It had been to tell her that he didn't mean the hurtful words of resentment he'd flung at her in Karachi... That he loved her, and that her willingness to come forward had been worth so much more to him than he could have articulated.

But he'd deleted that draft along with all the rest, and his phone screen had been off for some minutes now.

He didn't know if it was more cowardly to send her a message or to leave her in the dark, but he knew that whatever decision he made it would have to be soon. His fall had already started, and these thoughts he was sparing her now were already too many.

Sherlock pressed his home screen button, but let out a low sound of frustration in the next second as he went to his text message application.

_St bart's. Come now. Urgent._

_SH_

He sent the message to John, and then moved his hips up so that his trouser pocket could accommodate his hand as he put his mobile away. He angrily grabbed the rubber ball that sat next to him on the floor and began to bounce it absently off the cabinet in front of him.

He couldn't think of her. Not now when she was safe and hidden away, and the people closest to him were in real danger. It was a betrayal of the friendships he was willing to die to protect that he was wasting time on this.

He swore that there would be time for her later. He'd make sure she knew what she was to him _later_. After everyone was safe and Moriarty's network had been dismantled... He'd tell her.

Though, even as he let the sound of the bouncing ball begin to block out all thought of Irene Adler, he knew that he was lying to himself.

**...**


	7. Burning

**Author's Notes:** Once again, thank you SO much to anyone who is passing the time by reading this story. I was a little slow coming round to posting this chapter for a few reasons. One is that I wrote about half of it... and then my computer crashed, and I lost the work. GAH! It took a fair bit of pumping myself back up after that to get back to work again. I remembered the skeleton of the chapter, but some of the subtlety was lost, and so I ended up hating the rewrite. Soooo... I took a bit of a break. When I came back to it, I was ready to go. I'm very happy with this installment.

Having said that, I've realized something about this story. It turns out that it's ended up being more of a character study than I initially meant it to be, but I don't mind the extra dimension. I know you're here for Irene and Sherlock, and they are my primary focus, but I hope you like the other stuff, too!

And one final note particularly for anyone who is only reading this on ff: I make a sincere effort to respond to anyone who takes the time to message or review me, but I am a bit forgetful and sometimes can't remember if I've responded to you. If this has happened, I'm really sorry! Your comments and constructive criticism mean the world to me, and I'm definitely not ignoring you!

*Deep breath*... Okay. Here we go.

* * *

><p><strong>Come Attrition, Come Hell<strong>

**Chapter 7: Burning ...**

Sherlock stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom, his hands clasped over his stomach, the glow from the light in the parlor seeping in to his darkened space from around and underneath his door.

_Caring is not an advantage... Sherlock._

He frowned as he recalled his brother's words from less than an hour earlier. He had taken the cigarette offered to him and in doing so had failed the test that, really, should have been quite obvious. He'd given in to his odd sense of confusion at the situation, had smoked the quite appreciated cigarette, and it had given him completely away to the older Holmes. He felt rather ridiculous for it now. Especially since John and Mrs. Hudson were very likely on "high alert" for any odd behavior... Which he was sure to exhibit, because once someone was asked to look for something, they were certain to see it. Even if it wasn't there.

And it wasn't.

He didn't have to be told that caring was not an advantage. It didn't even matter that it was, because it had never really factored in to his life or his routine... And when it occasionally did, it did well to make itself known as being decidedly _dis_advantageous.

He didn't know Irene. And he _didn't_ care.

He was admittedly distracted now, of course. A woman was dead and there were very few clues as to why or how, other than the camera phone that he lay in bed pointedly ignoring for the time being. He knew it would prove more frustrating than helpful at the moment, because he didn't have a clue as to where to begin trying to crack in to it... And that was the kind of vexation that could drive a man to put bullet holes in his wall.

Besides, who could focus with this damned music playing in his head?

Sherlock looked slightly to the door for a moment and creased his forehead. He could hear the creaking of the floorboards outside, and he knew that someone was coming to speak to him. There was a knock. He didn't answer. "Sherlock?" John's somewhat muffled voice came through the wood that separated them.

Sherlock still said nothing.

"Sherlock..." John said again, cracking the door open just a bit.

"What's the point of knocking if you're just going to come in anyway?" Sherlock asked, irritation in his deep voice, not even bothering to turn his head.

John stepped in further, letting all the light from the corridor in. He looked around, sighed, and then put his hands in his pockets.

"Are you okay?" He asked, his head ducked somewhat awkwardly.

"I've answered this question once already tonight, so why don't you save us both the time and irritation and tell me the answer you want to hear?"

Yes, he was okay. _Of course_ he was okay. Why wouldn't he be okay? So, Irene Adler was dead. It was unexpected; that wasn't to be denied. It was disappointing, certainly. She was fascinating, in her own way, so the world would be a little less clever for her loss. He could admit these things easily. He had respected her. He had even, to some extent, admired her. But had he cared for her? No. She hadn't been a significant part of his life and therefore her loss left no discernible hole in it.

And as his fingers began tapping at the button on his suit jacket, plucking out an unfamiliar concerto that had been repeating in his clouded head all night... He couldn't understand why it left him feeling empty.

"What are you doing?" John gestured toward him, referencing the way he was laid out on the bed.

Sherlock's fingers stilled, and the music in his head stopped. He worked his jaw for a moment, wetting his lips against each other.

"I _was_ trying to sleep."

A beat.

"In your jacket and trousers?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes with an exhale of breath.

"Do you often watch me sleep?"

"No-"

"Then how do you know what I _wear_ to sleep?"

"You index your sock drawer and you wear a silk dressing gown around the flat, and I'm supposed to believe you wear your suit jacket to bed?"

Sherlock frowned tightly.

"Alright," He started. "Don't believe it. Don't believe it all the way back to your arm chair, and later on tonight when you continue to _not_ believe it in your bedroom, you can take notes on how much you've _failed_ to believe it."

Sherlock turned on to his side, facing away from his friend. Somewhere, somewhere - not deep down exactly - but somewhere seemingly outside of himself and far away from this moment and these thoughts, he did understand that John Watson was his only real friend, and that he was only trying to help. Not deep down, but far away from who he was and what he knew he could be, what he _wanted_ to be, he knew that he appreciated it.

He appreciated it, because right now, for reasons unknown and unexplored, he felt-

"I'll leave you alone then." John's resigned voice broke through Sherlock's thoughts after a moment, and the light that spread in to the room began to narrow.

"Yes." Sherlock agreed sharply, but not angrily... and the door clicked shut once again, shrouding him in a darkness that was momentarily deeper than it had been before John had walked in.

Yes, Sherlock thought as he closed his eyes against a troubling sensation in his chest, the music picking back up where it had left off.

_Alone._

* * *

><p><strong>One year Later<strong>

_Alone is what I have. Alone protects me._

He was falling.

Just as Irene had said he would. Just as James Moriarty had threatened.

In some ways, perhaps, his whole life had led up to this moment. He was headed toward a vastness of solitude he'd never known before, and where just a year and a half before it may not have made a difference to him... it frightened him now. Now when he realized the way he counted on those around him. Now when he really had been able to open up his heart to the people whose hearts had already been open to him for so long. He had been ready, finally...

But _now_ he'd have to forget.

_I'm sorry, John..._

John couldn't be trusted to act the part. He had to believe the fiction. He, above all else, had to grieve. He had to watch his friend plummet to his death, and he had to show the world what it looked like when the only person close to Sherlock Holmes lost him.

_Forgive me. John, please forgive me..._

It was rushing up to meet him. The emptiness. The loneliness. The months or years ahead of him that he'd be forced away from London and Baker Street. His home. His friends. His family.

_As much a part of him as was the color of his eyes..._

The solitary man John Watson met at the lab in St Bart's was gone, and in his place was a man who had just reached his hand out for his friend across an impossible distance before he jumped in to this new world where the unknown awaited him... And he had meant the gesture. He'd meant the tears.

He didn't want to go.

Is this how The Woman had felt?

What was small was now large, and there was no more time.

_Goodbye, John._

_Goodbye, Mr. Holmes._

* * *

><p><strong>Six Months Earlier<strong>

_Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock._

Sherlock stared in to his bathroom mirror with almost mad intent, his hands tapping a dissonant and distracted rhythm against the porcelain of the sink. He had started to stare at his reflection while the glass was still fogged by the steam, but it was clear now. His hair had already begun to dry in ringlets around his forehead, and he found that now as he looked in to his own eyes, he didn't recognize the gaze that stared back at him. They were still that irritating color of blue-green that some of the papers liked to go on and on about even when the case they were supposedly reporting was far more interesting. They were still the same shape and size. They were still _his_...

But there was something in them he didn't like or understand, though he didn't try to smooth it away. He stood still, breathing deeply, examining the expression that had taken his face over. His eyelids were raised slightly higher, his mouth was quirked slightly lower, and his lips were pressed slightly closer together.

Sherlock stood up straight, bristling, as it suddenly occurred to him what it was.

This is what he must have looked like when he was in pain.

He clenched his eyes closed for a moment and shook his head as though to clear it of confusion.

What had he done? He'd allowed himself to succumb to something that had heretofore never even registered on his radar. He had felt a need worse than anything he had experienced in the darkest days of his addicted past, and he had given in to it, mind and body. And more.

But that was done. He had given himself a moment out of a million more that he would live, and it was spent. There was nothing more to hold on to or to grasp for. Not even an idea. Not even a whisper. He had to let Irene Adler go, which was a ridiculous notion, because he had never had her.

Sherlock squared his shoulders and corrected his posture before walking out of the bathroom and in to his bedroom, buttoning the last of his shirt buttons as he did. Irene sat on the bed with her back facing him. She'd put on the coat that he'd known she'd worn here while he was redressing and staring at himself in the mirror, and she was bent over a bit, probably, he thought, putting her shoes on.

"Are you going to ask me where I'm going?" She asked casually.

"Why would I bother?" Sherlock responded, returning her tone. "You don't have friends, you have people that you have leverage over - none of whom will know you are no longer a threat just yet... So, I'm sure you're likely to find yourself in the company of one of them tonight. Tomorrow I assume you'll be out of London."

Out of London. Sherlock's heart tightened at the mention of it.

Irene stood up and turned to look at him, a cold smile on her face as she clasped the cinch at her waist.

"That is an admirably brave face you're putting on, Mr. Holmes."

"I'm sorry?"

"A clever man once told me that sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side."

He raised his head, preparing himself for whatever the hell The Woman was about to say or do, because he had a distinct feeling that it wasn't going to be very pleasant for him.

"Flattering you think me clever." He spoke the words with an almost suspicious lilt, unsure of what was happening, or why The Woman suddenly seemed like... Well, like The Woman who'd greeted him naked in the entryway of her own parlor.

She laughed shortly.

"I think _you_ think you are."

He angled his face slightly so that he was looking at her almost from the corner of his eyes.

"I know I am. That's the advantage of being clever."

"Yet, for someone who's so intelligent, you really are insultingly easy to manipulate."

He smiled wearily.

"We've played this game before. Sorry to say I'm not interested in playing a second round."

The Woman looked incredulous.

"You really do think I care for you."

Sherlock let out a short breath of air in something like an ironic laugh at the familiarity of the situation.

"Trying to... Take it back?"

They were her own words thrown back at her for effect, but since he didn't quite know what angle she was taking, he didn't know if they would hit any kind of a mark. Judging by the unperturbed look on her face, they didn't.

"No." She shook her head. "I never gave it to begin with."

He clasped his hands behind his back, though he could hardly stop his fingers from twiddling against each other.

"I'm rather certain that you did." He spoke in the same tone that he had once used to tell a very powerful man that he would have procured the photographs that his employer sought to keep from the public by the end of that day. Had that really only been 6 months ago? It didn't matter.

Sherlock paused before finishing with one word.

"Twice."

"Oh, you mean the sex." Irene responded blithely. Sherlock couldn't keep the surprise from registering in his briefly widened eyes for just the moment that it did. "Well, I'm flattered that it meant so much to you, but sex it just sex, dear... Oh, don't worry. You were much better at it than I would have given you credit for."

That was intended, certainly, to be cruel. He had very few insecurities, and nearly none of them ever came in to play in his life, so having one so callously thrown in his face was unexpected and more than a little unpleasant. This, of course, didn't take in to account at all the fact that his heart was already shattered beyond recognition, and hearing these words from the person who had done it to him was close to torture.

Sherlock lowered his head, his eyes narrowed on Irene as he realized what was happening.

"You're trying to hurt me." It was a statement, not a question. "Interesting."

"Trying?" She asked with a laugh. "You think that I would come to the home of the man who just took everything I worked for away from me out of sentiment? You _guessed_ my password, and that's supposed to prove you're clever? Or that I love you?" She laughed again, though mirthlessly. "My darling, use that big sexy brain of yours and_ think_. You were a game. A hobby. A pet. Did it ever occur to you that I set that password because I just thought it was funny?"

Sherlock stared at her blankly, feeling a bit numb at that and, incidentally, more like himself than he had all night.

"And just what have you accomplished tonight then?"

"Isn't it obvious?" She paused, looking at him with wide and mockingly innocent eyes. "I got Sherlock Holmes to _beg_."

He could feel his face falling at that.

_Don't go..._

_Stop... _

_Not yet..._

Her face pulled in to derisive smile.

"Oh," she said. "I do believe you're starting to understand what's happened now."

It didn't take a genius to see what was going on, but since he _was_ a genius, it was as plain as day. Most likely she was putting on something of a show, but not just for him. It would have been for the both of them. There were several clues that lent itself to this conclusion. She was shaking slightly, and trying, desperately it seemed, to control her breathing. She was an accomplished liar, so the usual tells were absent, but then they had been absent before when he had known she was lying to him, too. He could only guess as to why she would be doing this, but it was probably in an effort to distance herself from this strange night. And from him.

But since the damage had already been done, and done thoroughly... He almost felt sorry for her.

Sherlock glanced down for a moment and took a deep breath, then settled his eyes back on Irene who looked so much like she didn't give a damn about him. The interesting thing was that even though he knew it wasn't real, that she was just playing her game, it hurt.

And even as he knew it was a bad idea to further engage her, he could feel himself growing defensive.

"You wanted me to say I loved you." He said coldly.

Irene's face changed for just a moment at that, a micro-expression that perhaps only Sherlock himself would have noticed.

"It would have been very entertaining."

Sherlock nodded.

"Of course... I _don't_ love you." He continued matter-of-factly, ignoring her comment and beginning to walk around the bed toward her. She watched him silently just as she had watched him in Mycroft's study, looking abruptly on her guard. "But that's what you really want to hear anyway, isn't it? To make it easier on yourself..."

He stood next to her now, staring down in to her widened eyes. He gave her a smile that was more of a grimace as he shook his head only once.

"Because if I said I loved you, how could you possibly walk out of here?"

She stared wordlessly at him for a moment.

"I feel sorry for you." She whispered.

"Don't." He responded almost as quietly, and then continued on normally. "It's not me you have to worry about."

"No?"

He pouted a bit in a shrug.

"No," He started. "I'm disappointed, really. You're failing to see what's right in front of you."

"And what is that?"

"That I've known from the outset of this encounter that you would be leaving at the end of it... And what you should ask yourself is, if I really wanted, could I convince you to stay?"

She was silent.

"Because I believe I could." He closed the small distance between them, running the backs of his fingers over her hand and hovering his lips very near to hers, though she seemed too mesmerized to notice. "If I really was begging, then I'd say those words you're terrified of hearing. I'd try to... Persuade you."

"What makes you think-"

"I can be very convincing when I want to be."

The haze lifted from her face at that, and her eyes were sharp once again. She stepped back from him.

"Goodbye, Mr. Holmes." She said, and her voice was a rasp of both resolve and uncertainty. She walked past him, and he didn't turn to watch her.

He couldn't watch her go.

He could hear the knob turn, and the door open... And with those two sounds he could feel almost a life's worth of love and desire amount to absolutely nothing. It was gutting, and he had never felt more alone.

"I couldn't have let you stay in possession of the information on that phone." He said suddenly, though quite calmly. Then with a deep breath, he did turn to look at her. Her eyes were on him, and her hand was on the knob of the open door. She looked surprised and, he thought, a little bit angry... but what he had just said was not meant to put either of those expressions on her face. It was just, plain and simply, the truth. "You must know that...?"

Irene's face didn't change, and so she must not have.

"Moriarty exploited that information once, and it would only have been a matter of time before he needed or wanted to do it again. No one was safe as long as you were in possession of the phone." He shook his head slightly. "Not even you."

"I would have been fine." She bit out.

He shook his head again, this time with an almost pitying smile on his lips.

"A child with a box of matches doesn't know the damage he can do until the damage has already been done."

Her faced transitioned from angry to visibly hurt, and Sherlock dropped his gaze to his bed before returning it to the wall before him.

"Goodbye, Ms. Adler."

There was a moment of ringing silence, and then he heard the door close.

She was gone.

For several moments, Sherlock stared at the wall before him, feeling the room beginning to spin and the breath beginning to leave his body. He felt, quite irrationally, that if he didn't move, he wouldn't have to feel the pain that he could sense welling up behind an emotional dam that was crumbling inside his body. Cold panic was settling like a fog around him, and he had to blink rapidly to keep his eyes clear.

He turned to look at the spot where Irene had just stood, and when he was confronted with the empty room his left knee gave out just slightly, but enough to alter his stance a bit. He tented his hands against his face, his nose resting on the tips of his fingers, before running them down his chin, and then through his hair.

It was almost as though she had never been here.

Sherlock shook his head at the thought. No, she _had_ been here. She had _just_ been here. The sheets of his bed were still rumpled and in disarray. The steam from the shower still moistened the air. She'd left visible and physical traces of her presence. She had been here.

_They_ had been here.

Sherlock took a deep breath, and was dismayed to find that it was shaking. There was a burning in his chest and a stinging in his eyes, and he believed that every second the distress he felt was as bad as it was going to get only to be proven wrong when it grew worse in the next.

Quickly, countless varying thoughts ran through Sherlock's mind, but one thread in particular rose well above the rest.

_You shouldn't have let her go/I had to let her go/I ruined her life/She ruined my life/Oh God/OH GOD/I loved her/I love her/I LOVE HER/Tell her/Coward/Tell her/One chance/Go after her/ONE CHANCE/ TELL HER-_

Sherlock growled, frustrated, and strode suddenly toward his bedroom door. He pulled it open and hurried through it and down the corridor. His feet carried him quickly down the 17 steps and to the foyer door, through it, through the front door, and on to the cold London walkway.

The ground was wet, and moisture hung heavy in the air as Sherlock quickly turned one way, and then the other.

Irene Adler was nowhere to be seen.

No, no, _no_. He had to tell her. If he didn't tell her now, _right_ now, she'd never know it. And why not _let_ her know it? It would do just as much harm to tell her he loved her as it would not to, so why not just rid himself of the words? He would never have another chance, he would never feel this way again, and the thought that he would have to bear the weight of the unsaid words and the unlived moments was crushing. He couldn't. His life wouldn't allow for it. She had to know. She had to know, or he feared it would take the rest of his life trying to forget it himself.

But she really was gone.

Irene Adler, in the end, had been the more intelligent of the two of them. She'd been cruel to him in those last moments to hurt his pride, to keep him from being able to bring himself to admit any sentiment that he did happen to feel. It had worked, and it had worked very well. He'd been somewhat cruel in return and had made it easy for her to leave him... and she had done quickly, and seemingly without looking back. He had been... insultingly easy to manipulate.

The part that she couldn't have known was how he really felt toward her, and so all she_ could_ do was be cruel. That fault was his. That was the kind of man he was.

He'd lost her.

No, he hadn't lost her. He had first given her up, and then had pushed her away. There may have been a time that he actually could have helped her, but he had been too blinded to see what was really going on. He'd let her drown right in front of him, and then when all she had to hold on to was the perceived promise of safety, he'd pulled it away from her flailing hands and watched her go under with vindictive intent.

_Love is a more vicious motivator..._

Yes, that was the kind of man he was... She couldn't have shown him kindness in the end. It wouldn't have fit.

Sherlock put one hand on his hip and pressed his lips together as he scanned the street one more time.

_The promise of love, the pain of loss..._

He screwed his eyes shut against his brother's words.

Did he want her? Yes.

He opened his eyes, hardened his face, and breathed in.

Did he have her? _No_.

Sherlock turned around, and walked slowly up to the front door of 221B. He stared at the open door recalling how he'd come here earlier tonight and how he'd been comforted by the sight of home. She'd taken that from him. She'd taken a lot from him tonight.

But would it change matters at all to grieve the loss? No.

Sherlock pushed through the front door slowly, then through the foyer door. He walked to the staircase and put his bare foot on the first step.

Was he in pain? Yes.

Second step.

Could he control it?

Third step.

Yes.

Fourth step.

Did he love her?

Fifth step.

Did he _love_ her?

Sixth step.

_Caring is not an advantage._

Seventh step.

_Sherlock._

Eighth step.

_I'm not a psychopath; I'm a high functioning sociopath. Do your research._

Ninth step.

_The name is Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B Baker Street..._

Tenth step. Sherlock rounded the landing.

_I've always assumed love is a dangerous disadvantage..._

Eleventh step.

Did he love her?

Twelfth step.

_Goodbye, Mr. Holmes._

Thirteenth step.

Was he in pain?

Fourteenth step.

No.

Fifteenth step.

Did he_ love_ her?

Sixteenth step.

No.

Seventeenth step.

_Goodbye, Ms. Adler._

Sherlock walked slowly though the door in to his flat, his heart shuttering up and the pain in his chest subsiding. It had all been a drama, a play, an act. Nothing said and nothing done tonight had meant anything at all, and he could appreciate the diversion and the deviation. The distraction.

The game.

Sherlock avoided looking out from his window as he made his way to his violin that was perched in the corner. Taking the instrument and bow in his hand, he positioned himself to play.

The haunting melody, The Woman's melody, spilled in to the air and began filling in all the holes in the flat, sinking in through the slats in the wooden floor, sinking in to the fabric draped over John's chair, being reflected back in to the open space by the mirror... absorbing through Sherlock's clothes and skin, stoppering up the parts of him that still bled and burned.

This was the end, and this piece of music, played for the last time, would end it.

Sherlock closed his eyes and let his remaining hurt and emptiness fade away with the dying notes, one after the other.

He played until there was nothing. He played until the tune meant nothing to him.

Sherlock opened his eyes, the music ceasing abruptly.

"Had a call from Mycroft." John's voice came from behind him. He didn't turn to look at his friend.

"I don't doubt it." Sherlock responded, replacing his violin to its usual spot.

"Would there be any point in asking if you're all right?"

Sherlock smiled slightly and turned around.

"A pun." He said with his smile turning to a sneer of dissatisfaction, and then sighed with a roll of his eyes. "Dull."

John creased his forehead.

"You sound disappointed."

"I was expecting..." He paused. "Better."

John nodded and stepped in to the room from the doorway.

"So... she's gone then?" He seemed to think he had to tread the subject lightly. "For good?"

Sherlock faced his back to John once again, and walked over to the window. He pulled back the curtains and looked down on the empty street below. There was a numbness in him where earlier there was a fire, and an emptiness where earlier there was a woman. The Woman. That was the answer to John's question.

_I won't last six months..._

"Yes." Sherlock said. "For good."

* * *

><p><strong>Two Months Later<strong>

Sherlock's heart beat faster than it ever had before in his life, and he was almost certain that the people around him could hear it. The adrenaline that coursed through his body was euphoric and nearly overwhelming, and he had almost no presence of mind left over to alert him to the fact that he was frightened.

He approached the figure in black that kneeled before him, his weapon drawn.

The Woman's sound of ecstasy, still Sherlock's text alert tone, filled the air suddenly, and Irene Adler looked abruptly up at him, her tear filled eyes wide.

"When I say run," He whispered at her, his eyes widening. "_Run_."

**END PART 1**

**...**


	8. Find Me

**Author's Note:** Hi again!

So, I took a short break to write the first chapter of a much, shall we say, fluffier fic… but my mind seems to want to be here instead, so… well. Here I am. :)

There is a scene in this chapter that I've had written since I started writing "Come Attrition", and I'm very excited to finally put it out there. I hope that you are just as excited to read it!

Thank you again to everyone who is following this story. You guys are wonderful!

* * *

><p><strong>Come Attrition, Come Hell<br>Part 2**

**Chapter 8: Find Me**

Mycroft stared at his brother silently from across his desk, his lips pursed and his forehead furrowed, as he seemed to contemplate the words the two of them had just spoken to one another. He looked, Sherlock thought, fairly reluctant and just a bit worried.

"You do realize what this would mean for you then?" He asked finally, the grave tone of his voice heavy with concern.

Sherlock stared unwaveringly into his brother's eyes and nodded once.

"He will tie your reputation to his chariot and drag it through the rubble."

Sherlock let a moment pass silently, but there was no weakness in his resolve.

"Yes." He agreed.

Mycroft took a deep breath, and then with obvious effort smoothed his expression in to a look of passivity as he sat up.

"I'll make some phone calls."

"I assume you know where he is?"

Mycroft smiled.

"Of course I know where he is." He responded. "He's in near constant contact. The truth is that he's always kept his hands relatively clean in his dealings, so bringing him in on any charge has remained relatively pointless."

"Well, there's a point now." Sherlock spoke the words in an almost irreverent way, and then stood. "I'll leave you to it."

**...  
><strong>

Sherlock Holmes walked out from his brother's posh home and on to the day-lit walkway.

Stopping for a moment, he looked up at the sky with just his eyes - a break in the gray just ahead him giving way to blue. He wondered what other skies in other cities looked like just now. He wondered what the air felt like across the world. Hot and humid? Cold and crisp? Violent? Air could be violent.

Anything could be violent.

He started walking.

There was a lot to think of now, and a daunting amount of work to be done.

And then there was The Woman.

Irene Adler was one of two things at the moment, alive or dead... And though dead was not the preferred possibility, alive made things harder. He would have to help her on his own with no help from John or Mycroft, because with all the other entanglements of his now extremely precarious situation - any help from them would put them in danger.

Sherlock absently hailed a cab.

"221 Baker Street." He said as he climbed in to the vehicle.

He rested his cheek slightly against his twitching fingers and looked out from the window at the blurred buildings as they passed. Now that he was alone and actually could afford it, he allowed his thoughts to turn completely toward the only puzzle in his life he had ever wanted to write out of his memory.

He couldn't deny that he'd spent the better part of this last month forcibly asserting an idea of The Woman in his own mind that was in no way congruent with the way he felt about her on the occasion of their last meeting, and that the unpleasant tightening of his chest when he thought about her in danger was proof that he'd failed somewhat in that endeavor. He'd tried to bury his sentiment for her deep within the center of himself, and at the first sign that she needed his help it had rushed securely back to the forefront of his emotional awareness.

He took a deep breath.

_Of course... I _don't _love you.  
><em>  
>The last words he'd spoken to her had been cold, and he found that when he thought about it now it made him... what was the word?<p>

Sad.

She had forced out of him a depth of feeling that he had never experienced before, and when she left he'd pushed it all away. Now there was no longer a burning fire in the hearth in her room in his mind palace, but rather a flickering candle... a candle that, if it tipped, threatened to engulf the room in flames. And him. It was best if he didn't allow that to happen. It was best if he kept his thoughts about her as sterile and clinical as though he were examining a body in a morgue.

Which, of course, was a terrible line of thought, because he had seen her lying dead in a morgue before... or at least, he had believed that it had been her at the time, and the memory was among one of the most painful he possessed. Especially now when it was very possible that The Woman was-

He clenched his eyes shut.

_Find me…_

* * *

><p><strong>3 Years Later<strong>

Sherlock opened his eyes slowly, a drug and pain induced haze settled securely around his consciousness. Dim dawn light filtered in through the blinds of the hospital room window, and as his pupils slowly adjusted to the dark a figure began to come in to focus.

And there she was, sitting at the foot of his bed.

It was odd. Sherlock had hallucinated or imagined this exact thing happening so many times, that he was surprised he knew for a fact that she was real. He didn't even really stop to wonder what she was doing back in London, because of course she had heard the news that The Great Sherlock Holmes had been shot and hospitalized... and _of course_ she had risked coming here to see him.

Of course she'd come to say goodbye. It was the only thing they ever said to one another.

"I know why you never contacted me." Irene Adler said quietly. Sadly.

Sherlock felt heavy and cold, and it had much less to do with the literal hole in his chest as it did with the figurative one.

"I'm sorry." He said, and his voice was hoarse. It sounded as though he had not used it in years, which was fitting. She hadn't heard it in that amount of time.

As the light from outside grew brighter, Irene came more in to view. Her hair sat around her shoulders in soft curls, and there seemed to be a glow about her that befit what she had become to him over the years he'd known her. The years he'd loved her. She was so breathtakingly stunning and he was so breathtakingly overwhelmed with everything that had happened in the last two days that he could not pretend, even with himself, that this was not the woman who he'd have spent his life with if his life had offered him that.

The Woman shook her head slightly, a small smile on her face.

"No." She responded, but there was no anger or malice in the word. "You could have a thousand chances to do it differently, and you'd do it exactly the same a thousand times."

Sherlock returned the smile, though he was finding it particularly difficult to breathe.

"I _have_ missed you." Sherlock admitted, though perhaps he wouldn't have if he hadn't been hooked directly in to a line of morphine.

"I believe you."

Sherlock tried to move his hand to reach for her, but was rewarded with a stabbing pain shooting through the whole of his torso and down his arms. He flinched suddenly, gritting his teeth.

Which was also fitting, because hadn't she always been just out of reach?

Her hand was caressing his face soothingly, and then running through his hair as he waded through the pain that was subsiding far too slowly for his liking, and the touch of her hands felt abstract and far away. He wanted to reach up and take them within his, but moving was torture.

It was a few moments before he realized she was whispering something to him, and then a few more before he realized she was only muttering shushing noises because he had been groaning in pain.

"Shhhh..." Her voice was so lovely and encompassing. "Shhh... It'll pass. It's not so bad."

Sherlock suddenly felt a rush of warmth, and noted vaguely that The Woman had just pressed the button on his morphine tap.

"Don't go." Sherlock heard his own voice ask pleadingly for the second time in his life, but it felt as though it were coming from outside of him.

"I can't stay." She gave the familiar answer. "I only came to ask that you please stop dying. Once was enough."

Sherlock looked up in to the face of The Woman and wanted almost desperately to tell her that he loved her and that he had been afraid for all those years that what he felt for her would destroy him and eventually _them_, and _that_ had been why he never contacted her. It hadn't been because he didn't want her, but it had been, in fact, exactly the opposite.

But he couldn't. There was the problem of Mary Watson now, and there was no room for telling Irene Adler that she was the love of his... well, "life" seemed so trite. She was more than that, more than a figure in his life. She was the sun, and he felt he orbited around her even when she was a million miles away. He felt the warmth of her few embraces in his sleep, and the pull toward her was constant. No, there was no room for telling her that she was everything he ever imagined could be awful and wonderful about love.

It was apparent to him that there would never be room for it.

"Don't say goodbye." He whispered, closing his eyes.

He felt her lips against his, and a gentle hand against his cheek. She was leaving him again, and there was nothing he could do to stop it... and the hurt that resonated throughout his entire being was somehow much worse than the wound beneath his heart.

"Goodnight, Mr. Sherlock Holmes." She whispered in to his ear, and then the bed shifted.

A few moments later, Sherlock opened his eyes to an empty room - a card with a W on it and a single rose sitting perched by the window.

Years before, when confronted with an empty room that The Woman had occupied mere seconds before, he had rushed out to declare his feelings for her. Now, with exhaustion and physical pain washing over him in heavy waves, he couldn't even lift his head to look toward the door she'd just gone through.

A warm tear rolled down the side of Sherlock's face as he closed his eyes again, allowing the morphine to begin fooling him in to thinking everything was just fine.

_Shhh... It's not so bad._

* * *

><p><strong>2 Years, 11 Months Earlier<strong>

Irene woke with a start, a barely suppressed groan seemingly stifled in the back of her throat, leaving her breathing ragged and uneven. She swallowed and took one, then two steadying breaths before she appeared to calm herself. She pushed herself up slowly in the small bed and narrowed her eyes as they began to scan the dark room.

Sherlock Holmes sat silently observing her, his fingers pitched beneath his chin, at the writing desk in the corner just to the left of the window, though his body was turned toward the bed.

"Nightmare." He said in a cool, even voice. It was a statement, not a question.

Irene jumped a bit.

"I..." She furrowed her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut for just a moment, but by the time she opened them again, Sherlock's face was no longer balanced over his fingers, and he was leaning forward. "How do you know?"

"I don't. I'm _assuming_." He answered honestly. "You woke up startled; that I could tell from the sudden and sharp breath of air you took. Your heart is probably racing; I can't know that, but since I still assume I'm correct, I'm sure you've already confirmed it to yourself."

"No, I..." She swallowed, obviously not sure of what to say.

Sherlock watched her intently, knowing that she had been through quite a lot in a relatively short amount of time, and unsure himself about how to proceed. He thought it best, for now, to let her control the conversation.

"What time is it?" She finished.

"Quarter to 2 in the morning." He answered her. "You've been asleep for 3 hours."

A small incredulous smile quirked up the side of her lips.

"Have you been watching me sleep the entire time?" She asked. He didn't answer. "Should I be flattered?"

"No."

"Of course not." She said with a short, almost indiscernible laugh, though, Sherlock thought, there was very little to laugh about considering the situation.

"You've had a recent and traumatic blow to the head," He began, maintaining his even tone, wary of giving her the impression that he was here for any other reason then that she had needed his help. "And I was hesitant to let you sleep at all lest you fall in to a very inconvenient coma... but I could see that you were in rather urgent need of it. So, yes, I was watching the entire time."

"I see." She said quietly, and then paused, any semblance of a smile or mirth dying away from her face. "You saved my life."

"Yes." He answered plainly, and he was glad that the darkness more than likely concealed his face from her.

"Why?"

"Would you have preferred me to let you die?" He asked bluntly.

"No, but why?"

"Why does anyone do anything?"

He knew it was an interesting question coming from him, because from anyone else it may have just been deflection with a million correct answers... But this time, there was only one. The reason _behind _the motivation.

"Because they can." Irene responded, quite correctly.

Sherlock raised his head a bit, a small smile spreading across his face.

"And, as it turns out..." He started, allowing an arrogant lilt to come across in his voice. "I could."

Sherlock flicked the desk lamp next to him on with that, and after a brief few moments of adjusting to the light, he found himself staring really and truly face to face with her Irene Adler for the first time since he had told her to run...

When he'd caught up to her minutes later and grabbed her wrist from behind her, she'd screamed once, but he managed to quiet her with a hand to her mouth, and pulled the two of them even farther in to the dark that seemed to swallow them both whole.

"Don't." Was all Sherlock had whispered harshly in her ear, holding her firmly to him. The flood of relief that she was safe was nearly enough to take his breath away, though it was clear from the blood on her head and hands that she had taken a spill in the short time they had been apart. His heart ached briefly for any pain she had endured before he shut the emotion out completely. He had completed the mission. She was alive, and out of immediate harm's way.

Sherlock had had a car waiting for them on the side of the road, and they had driven in dark silence for quite a while before reaching the fairly modern hotel. Though, to due quite likely to a combination of fatigue and pain, she had needed to be half carried to the room. He hadn't said a word to her, even as he laid her down on the bed... Even as he cleaned the blood from her forehead as she slept. Even as he gently ran a finger down her cheek.

Now, as though she could read his thoughts, Irene's own fingers went to the tender wound below her hairline.

"You never lost consciousness, so it's unlikely to be a concussion." Sherlock said, surveying the injury that she was touching. He no longer wore the black executioner's garb, as he had felt that Irene would have been quite unhappy to be greeted with that when she awoke, and was now simply dressed in a black shirt open at the collar, and black trousers. He had taken a bit of a beating himself, so he couldn't blame her for the intent way she surveyed his own wounds.

"Still," he continued. "I'll arrange to have it looked at before we depart."

Irene dropped her hand down to her lap, and looked him in the eyes.

"Depart for where?" She asked. "London?"

Sherlock kept his face relatively blank, though he knit his eyebrows together for just a moment, as though in confusion.

"Maybe it _is_ a concussion." Was his response as he narrowly avoided a stab of sympathy for her over the fact that the first place she mentioned was London.

Of course she wasn't going back to London. She wouldn't be in Karachi in the first place if London had been a viable option. It was very possible she would never see London again... And at _that_ thought, he did feel quite sorry for her.

"Then where?" She asked, tearing the sheet off of her and throwing her legs over the side of the bed so that she was now seated directly across from Sherlock, separated only by air and soft carpet.

Sherlock eyed her with an intense gaze that she didn't seem comfortable under.

"Where would you like to go?"

"Home." She answered without hesitation.

Sherlock ignored the throb in his heart, and managed to look almost disappointed.

"Yes, but we've already established that as an impossibility," he started impatiently. "So I ask you again - where would you like to go?"

Irene swallowed.

"America."

"Stop it." He chided, and Irene visibly flinched at the admonishment. "You'd be recognized in America almost as quickly as in London, and I've gone through quite a bit of trouble to get you out of this mess you've so artfully crafted for yourself."

"It's clear you already have a destination in mind. Why give me a choice?"

He shook his head as if to say, _"No, no, _no_...", _even as his betraying instincts were directing him to do things he knew he couldn't do.

"I didn't give you a choice, I asked you a _question_..." He paused, burning his gaze in to hers. "Now, why would _I_ do that?"

There was a long silence in the room as Irene stared back at him, her eyes slowly becoming sharp as realization poured over her face. Sherlock felt an odd sense of pride swell for her in that moment, because, of course, he knew she would understand him.

"To get answers." She said.

Sherlock felt his face smooth at this.

"And what does wanting to go home, or if not home then to America, tell me about you?"

"That I want something familiar."

He nodded shortly.

"Why?"

Her breath audibly caught in her chest, and her pulse leapt in her throat. She looked suddenly hesitant - scared.

"_Why_?" He pressed, leaning even more forward, balancing his weight on his forearms so that his face was very near hers, his eyes studying her carefully.

"Because..." She faltered for a moment, but she must have known he'd already seen it. Didn't she know he could read it off her like lines off of a page, and that he'd been aware from the moment she'd woken up with a catch in her breath?

"Irene," Sherlock said gently, allowing himself that. She looked in to his eyes. "Tell me why."

He'd destroyed her life with 4 letters, but still the next words to come out of her mouth hurt more than anything they'd said to each other the last time they'd met - even though he'd been expecting it...

"Because I'm afraid."

And with that, Sherlock's slumped as though he had been holding his breath. He knew he couldn't get her to admit that if he had just asked point blank; he had to have her follow a line of questioning to its logical conclusion so that she could admit aloud what she had already admitted to herself.

"And why did I need you to admit that? Now. Not in an hour, not tomorrow... Now."

Why did he want her to admit her fear now? For the same reason a drug addict needed to admit they had a problem sooner rather than later. A fitting analogy, he thought.

"Because if I can admit it aloud, and to you... then it can't control me."

Sherlock sat back, resuming his initial pose with his fingers underneath his chin.

"Now." He said again, and paused, then each word in his next question was said with deliberate emphasis. "Where. Would you like. To go?"

Irene took a deep breath.

"Where no one will look."

Sherlock smiled genuinely, recalling the day he'd said those exact words to John Watson when he had asked where Irene's camera phone was hidden.

"Excellent." He said as he reached behind him in to his coat that hanged over his chair. "I'm glad we are in agreement."

He produced an envelope, and handed it to Irene. Her brows came together as she opened it up to reveal several articles of identification, all with her face but not with her name, and a boarding pass that would tell her she'd be on her way to a new life by noon the next day.

_"_Well," she said, looking down at the words in front of her. "They'll never look there."

She looked up in to Sherlock's eyes. He swallowed, and reminded himself that in less than 12 hours she'd be out of his life again, probably - no, _hopefully_ - for good, and that he couldn't risk getting any more involved than he already was. Moriarty was in custody now, and time was growing short.

"Why?" It was her turn to ask now apparently, her eyes wide.

He furrowed his forehead.

"What do you mean, 'why'?" He sat up in his chair, feeling very uncomfortable with the look in her eyes. "Stop looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you think you've just garnered some deep insight to the inner workings of my soul."

"I've yet to find evidence of a soul, Mr. Holmes, but you can be sure you will be the first one to know if I do."

For some reason, a reason certainly better left unexamined, that offended him.

"In me, or at all?" He asked darkly. "Either way, I'd advise against holding your breath."

Irene stood up from the bed, dropping the documents to the floor, and then kneeled fluidly in front of Sherlock, staring up in to his eyes. He sat back in his chair as far as he could, pushing away the memory of when she had done this before in his flat. He didn't trust her then, and he didn't trust himself now.

"What are you doing?" He asked quietly.

"Why are you still here?" She asked, and he was surprised to find that her voice was tinged with something that sounded like awe. "With the rescue done, you could have set me loose on the world without a backward glance."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes.

"That didn't work out so well for you last time, if I recall." He held his hands out and gestured loftily at their surroundings.

Irene moved slightly as though he had just shocked her, and then fell back on to her shins, giving the impression of a woman who had just had the air knocked out of her.

Sherlock regretted his words, and regretted even more referring to that night aloud. He had resolved not to bring it up, to pretend none of it had ever happened... but it wouldn't be such an easy task if he was just going to throw it in her face like that.

"You let me leave to die." Irene said, her face hard. "So why did you come back for me?"

Sherlock swallowed, still boring his eyes in to hers, his teeth clenching behind his lips.

"You told me to find you." He responded. "So I did."

Whatever she had been expecting his answer to be, she did not appear to be expecting that.

"Why?"

Sherlock felt a deep frustration pooling in the pit of his stomach.

"Why, _what_?"

"I have a ticket on the floor next to me that says tonight is probably the last I will ever see of Sherlock Holmes, and I want to know _why_."

Why. She wanted to know why.

He could tell her. He could unload months of repressed loathing, and hatred, and aching, and longing on her this moment if he was so inclined. He could explain to her that she had broken his heart even though he had always believed that there was very little heart to break, that he had hidden his feelings for her in a locked room in his mind once it was clear that she really was _gone_... But even so, with all that, he had always known deep down that he couldn't _bear_ a world where The Woman was dead. So much so that even in the middle of the most dangerous case he had ever been involved in, he had tracked her across _continents _to make sure that she was okay.

He wanted to not care and to remain above it all; he wanted to be above this ridiculous sentiment that had ultimately been even Irene Adler's downfall, but in the end he knew he absolutely wasn't. Once he'd tracked her capture in Karachi, he'd had had very little time to make the proper arrangements. As it was, their current situation was shaky at best, and would remain so until she was out of this country. He'd have some cleaning up to do within the days to come, but that was the easy part.

The hard part was behind him, but the still hardest part was seated on the floor in front of him.

Then she reached up and put her hand over his, just as she had on that night that now seemed almost a lifetime away. Sherlock was jolted out of his introspection, and he pulled suddenly away from her touch.

"No," he said, standing up and walking past her to the other side of the room. She turned to look at him, but didn't move from her position on the floor. The surprised look of hurt in her eyes bothered Sherlock more than he cared to analyze. He buttoned his shirt at the collar. "You should sleep if you can."

"Sherlock-"

No, he couldn't listen to what she was going to say. He didn't want to hear _anything _she had to say. She was cunning and manipulative, and he had found himself drowning in his feelings for her once before... but he wouldn't allow it again. He'd saved her life, because he could not possibly have done anything contrary, but he _abhorred_ her.

Then, as it had transpired, he realized he had said all of this, more or less, aloud.

Irene stared in stunned silence, more than likely shocked at the emotional confession. Sherlock himself was shocked by it in any case, so there was no reason why she shouldn't have been.

"Why?" She asked again, standing slowly to her feet, her sharp and penetrating gaze fixed on him, and he could feel himself begin to unravel from the inside out, just as though she were tugging at a loose strand of his atomic makeup. "Why are you here if you loathe me so much?"

"This is redic-"

"Why?" She pressed, taking a step toward him.

It was then that he finally locked his eyes back on to hers, and she stopped. Somewhere along the way his heart had begun to pound almost painfully, and a weight of crushing intensity had settled in his chest. It was clear, the answer she wanted. What's more, was that the answer she wanted was nothing more than the truth.

The room around Sherlock disappeared, as it sometimes did, and he was suddenly back in 221B Baker Street, a soft fire burning in the fireplace that he stared down at it. He turned suddenly to see The Woman standing naked before him, her hair perfectly pinned up, just as she had upon their first meeting. She smiled at him mockingly.

"Why can't I make you leave?" He asked angrily, his voice unsteady, his eyes irritatingly wet. He circled around her, surveying her form, but not so much for its features as for its clues.

"Because you like me here." She answered, following his revolution with just the slight turns of her head.

"It's true, Sherlock." Came John Watson's voice from the kitchen. Sherlock turned suddenly in its direction only to see his friend staring at him from over a cup of tea at the table. John stared at him with his familiar irritated-yet-patient expression. "You know it's true, or else you wouldn't even bother."

"I didn't ask you." Sherlock ground out from behind clenched teeth.

"No, of course you didn't ask me. You never ask me, but I am _telling_ you."

"Telling me what?" He exclaimed in frustration. "You aren't telling me anything!"

"Figure it out, Sherlock!" The shorter man said as he rounded the kitchen table, coming to stand in the archway. "You're so good at reading other people, but you never think to turn the magnifying glass back in on yourself."

Sherlock's eyebrows furrowed furiously.

"What are you talking about?" He asked, and then turned toward the naked Woman. "What is he talking ab..." But the question died on his lips when he found that she was no longer naked, but wearing his blue dressing gown, her hair falling messily around her shoulders, and his heart ached.

"You..." He breathed, as she reached out to take his hand. More troubling than that: he found himself reaching back out for hers.

The Woman in his dressing gown disappeared along with his Baker Street flat, and he was very suddenly staring at the real Irene Adler, who was now standing just an arm's length away, looking at him as though he was the only person in the world. To his surprise and infinite humiliation, he was almost touching her, as his arm was still raised to touch her hand. He dropped it as soon as he realized, and cleared his throat.

The Schrödinger equation. That was always a good one; one that people almost always misunderstood. The cat was not both dead and alive, because once you opened that box, he was only ever going to one of those things. The paradox only served to highlight the fact that proposing that atoms could exist in every state all at once was absurd, because it would be like saying a cat could be dead and not dead at the same time. People never understood that it was always an exercise in thought, and not a practical application of theory.

Really, though, none of that mattered. It didn't even matter now as he ran the numbers and Greek letters of the equation through his head. It was only a distraction. Something to keep his mind occupied when there was nothing else in the room but her.

"The cat's dead." He blurted out, and then realized he did so, and closed his eyes tightly at the idiocy.

"Sherlock." He opened his eyes again to find her just in front of him, and with his hand in both of hers. He looked down at it, and then over to his left where Baker Street now seemed to blend in to his current surroundings. Mind Palace Irene and John stared at him expectantly, but his gaze only hit upon her. With his heart skipping a beat, and a general pain settling around his chest and eyes, he realized what it was John wanted him to admit aloud.

"Love..." He whispered, and then the apparitions were gone. He turned his gaze back to a stricken looking Irene Adler.

"What?" She asked with a small voice. Sherlock bit down and jerked his hand away from her; jerked his whole body away from her to face the far wall. He ran his shaking hand through his hair and then laughed mirthlessly at himself, or at her.

"No good deed goes unpunished." He said, looking back to her with wide and angry eyes.

"I don't understand." She said, watching him.

It was definitely the truth. How could she understand? He certainly didn't.

"You." He said after a moment. "My _good_ deed."

"Me?" She asked with a tilt of her head.

"Yes." He said with impatient anger. "You. Your rescue. Coming here at all. Thinking that I could pop in and out like a cigarette run to Tesco's."

Irene looked offended that he would talk about her that way, and in truth it was sort of absurd. This woman had nearly had the whole of Britain underneath her red shoe heel.

"And you think you're being punished for it?"

His lips pressed together in a very brief grin that didn't even reach his cheeks.

"Aren't I?"

Irene bit down and hardened her face.

"You wanted me to admit that I'm afraid, but you're the one who's really scared."

Sherlock's expression turned dark as he cocked his head a bit, hating everything about his life at the moment. He hated himself for all the stupidity of allowing this conversation to start let alone continue. He hated Irene for all the same reasons he always hated her, and he hated that every time he saw her he was being forced to let her go.

_Ugh, no!_ He reprimanded himself. _I _want_ to let her go..._

"Scared?" he asked, then stalked toward her in one slow step.

Irene stood her ground, though it clearly surprised her when Sherlock took her hand and pressed it hard against his chest. She looked sharply up in to his narrowed eyes. His jaw was set, his cheeks were hot... and his heart was pounding.

"I'm terrified." He finished.

And then, as though no time had passed between the worst night of Sherlock's life and now, Irene Adler kissed him.

**...**

* * *

><p><strong>End Note: <strong>If you want to know what really happened in Karachi, I suggest you head over to "Neither A Soldier, Nor A Gentleman" by Francesca_Wayland if you haven't already. I read the story during my little break, and it's a much better depiction. The story is absolutely flawless!


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